


The Howling Commandos (new series on HBO)

by ChibiSquirt



Series: Before and After (In a Long, Long Life) [1]
Category: Blood-Smoke Series - Tanya Huff, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Closeted Character, Darcy is the fandom bicycle and I love it, F/M, I should probably have realized this sooner, M/M, Multi, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, Not Captain America: The Winter Soldier Compliant, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, The Howling Commandoes (HBO series), There are a lot of shipping tags here for a fic that's not really about shipping, there are a LOT of closets in this fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-27
Updated: 2016-05-10
Packaged: 2018-06-04 19:51:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 48,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6673390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChibiSquirt/pseuds/ChibiSquirt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>The young man had brown hair, green eyes, and a classically handsome face.  His smile looked genuine and showed very white teeth as he held his hand out to Steve.  “Hi, I’m Lee Nicholas,” he said, “I’ll be playing the part of Bucky Barnes.” </em><br/> </p><p>Or:  The one where they make a Howling Commandos TV show, and Steve gets called in to consult.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Steve

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [tin soldiers](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1758087) by [idrilka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/idrilka/pseuds/idrilka). 



> Okay, so I did not come up with the idea of a Howling Commandos TV show. I'm pretty sure that's been in a couple of fics, but the one that comes to mind is _tin soldiers_ , which actually made casting pictures. When I read that fic, my first thought was, "You know who could do a really great job with Bucky Barnes? Lee Nicholas!" 
> 
> And then I really wanted that.
> 
> Also, there is not NEARLY enough Smoke series fanfic. I just... What the heck. They are adorable little doughnuts, and the worldbuilding is extrasolid, how have people not written the heck out of that fandom? 
> 
> Lastly, in case anybody is mad at me for breaking up Lee and Tony: Yeah, like they could ever stay apart. So they are broken up at the beginning of this fic, but by the time I'm done, I genuinely believe they will be back together. (I'd promise, but I've learned the folly of promising before I've finished a fic.) (I'm pretty sure, though.)

It started when Maria Hill flagged him down in the hallway.  

Steve actually liked Maria Hill a lot: his first impression, of a controlled, strong-willed woman in control, dated back to their introduction on the Helicarrier, and he hadn’t seen anything that contradicted it yet.  He had observed her mediocre popularity amongst SHIELD personnel with a baffled shrug and an outstretched hand, and a year after their first meeting, that attitude continued to serve him well.  

So when she called out to him in the hallway of the Triskellion (always “Captain Rogers”, never “Captain America”, yet another mark in her favor), he had no problem turning and waiting for her.  

“I’m glad I caught you,” she said, tucking one of the ubiquitous tablets under her arm.   _ Anybody ever figures out a way to weaponize those things, we’re gonna be in a lot of trouble,  _ Steve thought, watching her tuck an errant strand of hair behind her ear. _ _  “I had a couple of optional assignments for you,” she continued.

She looked a little nervous, and Steve thought for a moment.  

Mandatory assignments involved the Avengers.  So far, there’d been four.  That worked out to one every three months, and for that they were paying him a living wage.  It was  _ ridiculous,  _ and it had taken only three weeks for him to demand more to do with his time.

Some of his “optional assignments” involved playing backup to the STRIKE team, who were usually perfectly capable of going out without him, occasionally needed his help, and always welcomed him when he came out with them.  

One of his “optional assignments” was a week spent in Malibu, enjoying the sun and the sand and as many frozen drinks as he wanted as long as he stayed glued to Tony Stark and said, “Tony, NO!” as often and as loudly as necessary.  Steve had come out of that one with a faint tan (which faded in just under two days), magnetic retrieval gauntlets for the shield, three bottles of single-malt scotch, a new motorcycle with a top speed of over two-hundred miles per hour, and (for reasons that were never, ever going to be discussed in public) a full drag ensemble, including shoes, lingerie, makeup, and a clutch.  

Seafoam green was a very flattering shade with his coloring, Pepper had assured him.

(He had told Hill and Nick that if they ever had another opening, he would be happy to take that particular assignment again.  Hill and Nick had told  _ him _ that he was actually pretty terrible at telling Tony “no”.)

(Then they gave him hazard pay, which Hill explained was because of the heels.)

Steve had also had a couple of “optional assignments” which involved cleanup up after the more explosive of the non-optional assignments.  He always, always took those when offered.

Mostly, though, “optional assignment” meant “giving a speech”.  

It had baffled him, at first; once he’d got off the stage in 1944, he’d never thought people would want him to go back on it, but apparently a lot of people wanted to hear what Captain America had to say about things.  And not necessarily relevant things, either.  Actually, he had  _ never  _ been asked to speak about the current state of the geopolitical arena; he tried not to find that worrying.  

He  _ had  _ been asked to speak at both the Democratic and the Republican National Conventions, though, both of which he would have declined even had SHIELD not requested he do so.  He’d also been invited to speak at the White House Correspondent’s dinner, and that he had done, talking about the importance of accountability in both politics and reporting.  

(Then he shook the President’s hand and sat between Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, one of whom shook his hand and traded Yiddish with him, and the other of whom asked him to sign a vintage uniform.  It was a good night.)

Other than those, though, his invitations had all been non-political:  galas, fundraisers, charities, schools, and even a World War II historical re-enactment society.  (He’d signed a lot of trading cards at that one.  A  _ lot.  _ Of trading cards.)

It hadn’t taken long to realize that he couldn’t possibly do all of the speaking engagements he was offered, so he had sat down with Hill and worked out a set of guidelines.  

No political organizations except for the VA.  

No for-profit organizations. 

Nothing associated with terrorists, drugs, child labor, or human trafficking.  

He did not require a speaker’s fee, but if the organization wasn’t covering his travel, he expected that SHIELD would.  

He’d be happy to take engagements outside the US, but would like the majority of his engagements inside the country.  This wasn’t prejudice; it was just that customs was always frustrating for someone whose passport listed  _ July 4, 1918  _ as the date of birth.  

Nothing associated with any religion, even Catholicism; the service being in English had disconcerted him, and his research into the course of the church in the subsequent years had done nothing to lessen his feelings of alienation from an organization which had once held a big role in his life.  

So now, he spoke at a lot of graduations, a fair amount of charities, about an equal amount for veterans, and the occasional oddball event like the reenactors.  He’d spoken to a couple museums for their historical records, including the Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the Smithsonian was putting together an exhibit that he had gotten to talk to them about.  

So if Maria Hill wanted to talk to him about optional assignments, and was a little nervous, it was probably more speaking events.  

He was half-right.  As she escorted him to the cafeteria, she explained that Thor was being recalled to Asgard for a few crucial weeks, and had expressed the hope that he would “attend to” Drs. Foster and Selvig while they relocated from London to New York.  

“Does ‘attend to’ mean ‘hang out with’, or ‘bodyguard’?” Steve wondered.

“Given what we know of them, and what just went down in London?  It’s probably a combination of both,” Hill admitted.  

Steve shrugged.  “Sounds fine,” he said.  “How long?”

“Two weeks, one in London, one in New York.  After that, they’re headquartering in Stark Tower and they’re Tony’s problem.”  

“Done.”

Maria hesitated.  “There’s one more,” she said.  “I know we worked out those qualifications for speaking engagements, and this falls outside of them.  I think you’ll probably want to do it anyway, though.”

Steve’s left eyebrow quirked up a notch.  He’d assumed that there was a lower-level agent somewhere sorting through his invitations; certainly, there was one for the rest of his mail.  Since he didn’t know who that agent was, it seemed odd that they would have a feeling about when to make an exception to the rules.  “What is it?” he asked.

“Do you know what HBO is?” Hill asked.

_ “Sex in the City,”  _ Steve answered immediately. 

Hill winced.

“Also, um…   _ Game of Thrones?” _ Steve offered, and now Hill nodded.

“Yes, exactly.  They make television series and mini-series, many of which have achieved a good measure of popularity; the budget and quality tend to be higher than average for television.   _ Game of Thrones  _ is probably the best model for this, they’re aiming for a similar target market and investing a similar amount of time, money and resources.”

“Investing in what?” Steve asked cautiously.

Hill took a steady breath.  “They’re making a Howling Commandos television series.  They want you to consult.”

“Oh.”  

Steve took the opportunity of holding a door for Hill and a couple of junior agents to think it over.  On the one hand, talking to a room full of strangers about the people who meant the most to him didn’t exactly sound like a barrel of monkeys.  On the other hand, if the show became popular and he hadn’t consulted, he’d be partially to blame for all the misconceptions it was spreading around.  He tried to imagine the breathless enthusiasm he’d seen in Avengers fans being applied to “shipping” Dernier with Gabe Jones, and shook his head once, hard, to clear it.  

On the imaginary third hand, there would probably be some “shipping” any way.  

And on the fourth hand, it might be good to tell some of those stories.

“They actually wrote a general letter directly to Director Fury,” Hill told him, head cocked to the side.  “They wanted ‘anything we could give them’, including any video or photos we could release, any debriefs, stuff like that.  He gave them copies of a lot of it, nothing so classified we were still using it, but still, more than I had expected.  Said he thinks the show will take off regardless, and he would like it to be as accurate as possible.”  

She shrugged, then added, “I may have been the one who suggested sending you to consult, so I hope you agree to go.”

Steve nodded.  “Will Agents Triplett and Phillips be going?” he asked.

Hill side-eyed him, reaching for the trays and passing one over.  “Agents Triplett and Phillips,” she repeated.  “Just them?”

Steve frowned.  “Yes…?  Am I missing one?”

She shrugged.  “Thirteen,” she said dryly, and that was a surprise; he’d thought his research into his contemporaries had been much more thorough than that.  “But I think Triplett and Phillips will be plenty for this purpose.”  She eyeballed the green beans, then passed with a shudder, spooning up mashed potatoes, instead.  “I should be able to get them both released for it, yes.  I’ll have to do some shuffling, and it’ll leave a vacant position…  But Phillips is easy, we’ve been trying to wind him down anyway, because he’s so close to retirement...”  She frowned, thoughtful.  

Steve reached for the meatloaf and marveled privately that Chester Phillips’ grandson was  _ almost ready to retire.   _

“Agent Triplett is harder to reassign, but I can make it happen.  You’ll definitely like him, by the way,” Hill continued.  “If you go, that is, which you haven’t said you will, yet.”

“Could I meet them even if I didn’t go?” Steve wondered, and HIll’s shoulder jerked back a fraction of an inch.  “I will go, I mean, assuming there isn’t a call to assemble that day, I just…”

“Of course,” Hill said.  “Why haven’t you met them already?  Phillips and Triplett?”

“I was told that since they were active agents, their contact information was confidential.”

“What idiot told you that?”  Maria Hill did not like incompetence, and Steve gave an internal wince for poor, awkward Agent Peterson, who had been hopelessly unprepared for the demands Steve had made of her after waking up in the future.  “Jesus.  Yes, of course, I’ll send you their email addresses this afternoon.”  She took some of the creamed spinach, and asked, “Would you like to invite Tony Stark and Representative Morita, as well?”

Steve nodded, then shook his head.  “Not Tony.  Jim’s daughter, though, yes.  For one thing, she takes after her father, from what I’ve seen; it might help people get a feel for him.  For another, her email is public record, and we’ve been corresponding since just after Manhattan.  I’d love to meet her in person.”  

Hill pressed her lips together and grabbed three bottles of orange juice out of the cooler, keeping one and passing the other two over.  “I…  You should have met all of them,” she said, voice faintly apologetic.  “Someone dropped the ball, and it happened  because they were too busy reading the handbook.”  And then, because Hill would always relate to people best through action, she added, “I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

Steve didn’t sigh. He did breath out deliberately, though, and nodded again.  “I’ll send Phillips and Triplett both notes tonight, introducing myself and saying I’ll see them at the HBO thing.  How long do you think that’ll last, do you think?”

Hill shrugged.  “A couple hours?” she guessed.  “Maybe all day?”

  
  
  


It turned out, the real answer to that question was, “As long as they can get you.”  As a thin, silver-haired man with a headset and clipboard explained to him, there would be one all-day meeting of the writers, directors, producers, lead actors, and set and costume representatives with as many direct relatives of the original Howlies as they could find; after that, they would negotiate to get more of his time, but there was only so much money they were willing to sink into the “research” end of the operation, and as it turned out, people with history degrees came cheaper than SHIELD-backed super-soldiers.  

Imagine that.

Still, as the silver-haired man (“Nathaniel Gauss, darling, call me Nate, I’m the producer for this madhouse.  Also the head writer.  It’s a bit of a labor of love, I’ll be honest.”) showed him into a room with about forty people, Steve was moderately optimistic.  The walk over from Stark Tower had been a beautiful fifteen minutes full of sunshine and bustle, and he’d had a good half-marathon run this morning.  

Nate showed Steve into a conference room with a large - very large - display of baked goods and beverages on a side table, then waved him away as a young lady with a honey-colored ponytail and a septum piercing attacked him with a name tag.  

(It read:  CAPT. STEVEN ROGERS, and then underneath that, in a smaller font, and parentheses: [CAPTAIN AMERICA, IRL].)

The girl (her own name tag read:  JODIE SMITH [PRODUCTION ASSISTANT, THC]) pointed him towards the refreshments, urging him to take some, then waving towards the rest of the room and explaining that there was a “mingling hour, which is really half an hour, now, but we’ll all be running late, so three-quarters, maybe?  Anyway, just walk around with your coffee or whatever and, like, talk to people.  Talk to the writers, they’ll wet themselves.”

Alright, then.

The room had a central conference table, with chairs around it; there were place markers at each, so Steve loaded a plate with a pyramid of four muffins, propped it on a cup of coffee, and wandered around the table until he found his spot.  Just as he was setting his coffee cup to the right of his muffin stash, a gruff voice came from his left:  “Captain Rogers?”       

Steve jerked, looking over quickly to see a middle-aged man with a deeply impressive, pepper-and-salt mustache walrusing over his lip.  Behind the ‘stache, though…  “Agent Phillips?” Steve asked, almost sure.

Agent Phillips smiled with one side of his face, covering his name tag.  “How’d you guess?” he asked, sardonically, and it sounded so much like something his grandfather would have said that Steve was momentarily breathless.  

Also: _ Damnit, I forgot to even look at the name tag! _

Steve put out his hand.  “Pleasure to meet you,” he said.  “Your grandfather was a heck of a C.O.”

Phillips looked pleased, and a little surprised.  “Thank you,” he said.  “It’s an honor.  Although I have to say, some part of me expected you to be my age.”

Steve raised an eyebrow.  “Oh?”

“I knew you weren’t,” Phillips hastened to add, “but it just didn’t seem possible that you could look so much younger than I, what with you having been born before my father.”  He shrugged, and offered, “Life is weird.”

Steve tipped his chin in a quick agreement to the sentiment.  “You know, I’ve been looking for a mantra,” he said seriously.  

Phillips looked pleased, letting his hand fall from the name tag.   _ (AGENT MICHAEL PHILLIPS;  GRANDSON, COL. PHILLIPS.)   _ “You believe all that new-age craptrap?” he snorted.  

“Not really,” Steve admitted.  “But it’ll drive Stark crazy if I act like I do.”

Behind him and to his right, someone snorted, loudly.  “I have literally not even met you yet, and already, I like you,” said Mr. Unknown--who, Steve discovered when he turned, could only be Agent Triplett.  “I’m Trip,” he said, extending his hand, and Steve pumped it, grinning.  Then Trip leaned around him, making eye contact with Phillips.  “Mike,” he said, a greeting and a summons all at once.  “The DRC?  What the fuck.”

“Classified,” answered Phillips.  It kind of sounded like “back off” mixed with “I know, that was  _ so stupid _ ,” though, and Steve closed his eyes against a wave of homesickness, remembering a time when he was surrounded by military men, by people who talked like that  _ all the time,  _ people who didn’t have to finish their sentences or say it outloud because they knew each other already, knew how to fill in the blanks.  

Maybe the next time he was at the Triskellion, he’d ask for more STRIKE assignments.

Or maybe he’d try to gather the Avengers together more often.

Something.

“Heard a rumor you were switching teams again, though?” Mike Phillips was saying, and Steve came back to himself in time to see Trip shaking his head.  

“Switched and then un-switched again,” he said, “Because this came up.  Hill pulled me from JJ’s team and stuck CLL back on, don’t know who’s going to be filling CLL’s spot, but she’s already said it’s not me.”

“What’s CLL even doing these days?” Mike wondered.  “And what poor bastard has to put up with him while he did it?”

Trip snorted.  “Who knows?  All I know is, he was gone, and now he won’t be, and I get to be gone instead, which means I might get to go  _ five minutes  _ between exaggerated, long-ass stories.”

“Although maybe not today,” Steve commented.

“Joy,” muttered Mike, then leaned back to pull out a chair next to his.  “Representative,” he greeted.

Oh.

Steve was really looking forward to this.  

“Gentlemen,” Representative Morita said, setting her coffee firmly down beside the notepad and plate she had already arranged at her seat.  She was a short woman, broad in much the same way Jim had been, same square jaw, long face, pointed chin.  Her hair was an iron-gray helmet around her head, a no-nonsense cut; her makeup was minimal.  

She propped one hip on the table and crossed her arms, her lilac silk suit rustling and name tag (REP. J. MORITA  [DEM - CA]; [DAUGHTER - J. MORITA]) crinkling with the movement.  Steve couldn’t help but notice that her shoes surpassed the SHIELD height limit for hazard pay.  She read all of their name tags, cocked an eyebrow, and told Trip, “I hope JJ and CLL aren’t initials for their names; that would be a terrible breach of confidentiality.”  

She looked like what Steve’s ma would have called a battle-axe,, ready to step up right into the space of whoever needed to be taken down.  Steve would have worried, but Triplett snickered behind him, and as the eyebrow arched higher, said, “Nah, Mike and I have been bitching to each other about those two for  _ years.   _ We’ve developed a code.”  

Mike nodded, explaining, “JJ is  _ Jabber-Jaw, _ he goes on and  _ on  _ with those stories of his, and only one word in five is true.  CLL’s short for  _ Crazy Little Loner,  _ because the guy is good at what he does, but he is a box of matches and a hug away from setting up in a cabin somewhere, making bombs.”

The representative nodded sharply, took out a flask, and poured a hefty shot of amber-colored liquid into her coffee.  

Steve busted out laughing.  

She raised an eyebrow, then extended a hand.  “Captain Rogers,” she greeted.  “It’s good to meet you in person.  Have you actually been emailing me for the last year, or has someone been playing a very ill-natured prank?”

“Oh, I’ve been emailing you,” Steve answered easily.  “And I’d be happy to discuss your voting record on military contracts in more depth some time soon.”  

She rolled her eyes.  “Don’t bother, my voting record is boring on military contracts.  Let’s talk my voting record on women’s rights, that’s much more interesting.”

“Your women’s rights record is consistent, your record on the military is much less predictable,” Steve argued.  

Trip interrupted.  “Okay, I suddenly know why you two aren’t sitting next to each other.  Weren’t we supposed to be mingling?”

Steve blinked, innocently.  “We’re mingling,” he protested.  “We’re mingling with each other.”

“No,” ruled Phillips.  “I see the producer, I’m going to go talk to him.  Trip?”

“Yeah, coming with you.”

Steve sighed.  “Alright, to be continued.  Representative Morita?”

“Call me Jeanine.  I’m mingling with whoever’s closest to the doughnuts.”  She picked up her coffee cup, and turned away.  

She wasn’t the sort of woman who looked back.

Steve decided, after a moment, to follow her example, and wandered in the direction of the coffee.  There was a knot of handsomer-than-average men there, whom he suspected of being the actors; maybe he could introduce himself to them.

He wandered over just as the group shuffled with a burst of laughter.  The resemblance was strong, and a little eerie; Steve almost felt that if he relaxed his eyes a bit, ignored the clothes, he could have been looking at the Howlies themselves, rocking with laughter at an off-color joke.  “If this were the original Howlies, though, that would have been a fart joke,” he muttered, topping off his cup.

Maybe he hadn’t been as quiet as he thought, because--

“Does a poop joke count?” asked Probably-Dum-Dum, grinning and taking an extra-large bite of his bagel while probably-Gabe snickered beside him.  

“It really does,” Steve answered, then took a deep breath and introduced himself.  “Steve Rogers.”

“We’d guessed,” answered Probably-Jim, shaking hands.  Either he was also from California, or he was nailing the accent perfectly.  “You were either you or Isaac, who I haven’t met yet.”

_ “I  _ have.  He was here, he just went for a smoke.”  This was the speaker at the center of the group, the one who had told the joke.  The young man had brown hair, green eyes, and a classically handsome face.  His smile looked genuine and showed very white teeth as he held his hand out to Steve.  “Hi, I’m Lee Nicholas,” he said, “I’ll be playing the part of Bucky Barnes.”

The rest of the group piped in, too; apart from Dernier and Monty, he had all of the Howlies’ actors.  Or, to put it another way, he had Geoff, Sean, Lee, and Ken, plus Joe (Col. Phillips) and Evan (Howard Stark).  

Steve shook his head.  “The casting on this is incredible,” he mentioned.  “The physical resemblances… they’re pretty, well…”

Heads were nodding.  “Partly, it’s because they were mostly getting unknowns,” answered Ken (Jim).  “I think Lee here is the most famous of us, and his last show was a straight-to-syndication vampire series.”  

“No,” Lee disagreed.  “First of all, my last show was a movie, thank you, it’s just it was Indie, so you’ve never heard of it.”  Evan (Howard) snickered, so presumably there was a joke in there.  “And second of all, the most well-known of us is Joe.”  Lee affected a look of solemnity, and intoned,  _ “Joe  _ plays  the  _ president.” _

“He does?  In what?” asked Steve, and Geoff (Gabe) laughed.

“In everything,” Sean (Dum Dum) said, grinning.

“Oh God,” groaned Joe.  “Can I just tell you how glad I am that I will not be the fucking president in this thing?!”

“Gets old?” asked Steve.

“So much.  It wouldn’t be so bad if I could be a bad president, or a stupid president, or even a fucking introverted president!  But no, all presidents are apparently noble, clever, kind, and brave, and they fart  _ My Little Ponies  _ and burp rainbows.”

Steve laughed.  “You’re not really breaking type, then.  The original Phillips was absolutely brave and clever.  He was also a pragmatist, though; he didn’t get hung up on ideals, much, and he was always short of the supplies he needed, so he was constantly having to cut deals with his conscience.  And he knew if he seemed like an idealist, the men would think he was naive, so he covered it up by trying to seem like a jerk.”

“Hey, thanks,” Joe said, looking surprised and blinking.  “That… actually helps a lot.”

“No problem,” said Steve, surprised himself.  “Huh.  I guess that’s why they wanted me here?”

“I wouldn’t have called that,” commented Geoff.  “I thought for sure this was a sham thing; ‘Look how devoted to accuracy we are!’ as they somehow manage to make Lee take his shirt off in the middle of a battle.  That sort of thing.”

Lee sighed.

“But it sounds like you all might have some good clues for those of us who are trying to paint these characters, and that’s a pretty cool discovery.”

Steve smiled, and took a sip of his coffee.

  
  
  


Ten minutes later, Sean was in the middle of a story about what his six-year-old had done last week (it involved multiple unconventional uses of crayons), and the group was focused on his face and hands, as his thick fingers prodding the air to show the shape of the mess.  

Steve realized abruptly that someone was watching him.   _ Had been  _ watching him, steadily, for at least a couple minutes.

Steve looked out of the corner of his eye, scanning for the threat, and there was nothing to the right.  To the left…

He stared.  

The young man was tall and broad in the manner of someone who works out for several hours every day, and made more so by his posture, military-straight.  He was standing not quite at attention, fingers twitching like he wanted to solute.  HIs eyes were a brilliant, cerulean blue, made more intense by the navy henley he wore, and his hair was blond - a crew-cut.  He had a pair of silver wire-rimmed spectacles resting on his straight nose.

Steve swallowed.  

The strangest part, he thought, was how  _ quiet  _ the young man was.  It wasn’t something he would have predicted; he had thought, surely, they would have cast the matinee-idol, the stage presence.  Instead, they had cast someone to play  _ Steve Rogers.   _ It was a good sign, as far as the show was concerned.  As far as Steve himself was concerned, though, it was…  

“Disconcerting.”  Steve watched a blue-clad shoulder twitch, and added preemptively, “I left the service a year ago, son; don’t solute.  You’d be Isaac?”

“L - Isaac Greeley, yes sir.”  And he went into not-quite parade rest.

“What branch?”

Isaac’s smile was quick and restrained, and Steve recognized it from his own face.  “Coast Guard, sir.  I wanted to help people, figured rescuing them from hurricanes would do it.”

“But you saw action,” Steve said.  Didn’t ask.  

“Only a little.”  

Isaac didn’t say any more, and Steve decided it was more polite not to push.  The rest of the group had gone quiet around them, and he thought he might be making a scene.  He didn’t mean to; it was just that former-Lieutenant Greeley had a gravity to him which he instinctively wanted to respect.

It had been a morning of introductions, but Steve was decisive when he held his hand out one more time.  “Pleasure to meet you, Isaac,” he said firmly.  “Please, call me Steve.”   

  
  


They were called to their seats not long after that, the morning beginning with a Q&A session where at least half the Q’s had the form of, “What would X have said about Y?”  There were also about fifteen timeline questions, these being mostly for Steve:  “Which came first, S or T?”  

Then they started asking for stories, and Trip kicked it off with a recounting of how Gabe, who wasn’t even in the 107th, wound up a POW with the rest of the Howlies.  (Answer:  a mix of rare bravery, good sense, and bad luck.)  Afterwards, there were a lot of questions about how Gabe’s race had played into these events, and Steve asked, “What are you going to do about the vocabulary problem?”

“What vocabulary problem?” asked Nate, the producer who had shown Steve in.  

Oh, this was gonna be awkward.  “Well,” Steve spelled it out, “I mean….  Nobody was saying  _ African-American,” _ and someone - he didn’t see who - made a choking noise.  “The word Gabe himself used, and which most of the rest of us used, as well, was  _ coloured,  _ but as I understand it that word is now considered somewhat insensitive.”

_ “Most  _ of the rest of you?” repeated one of the writers, sounding semi-hysterical.  “What, were some of you going around using the N-word instead?”

“The N-word was considered acceptable use at the time,” Steve pointed out.  “But no, it’s just that Dernier would have said it in French.  He had some English, but if Gabe was around, he always just spoke French.”

“We’ll work through it,” Nate Gauss told him, then turned hastily towards Jeanine.  “Representative Morita, how about you?  Did your father mention any ways in which his race affected his relationship with the 107th?”

“He said mostly people didn’t talk to him about it,” she said.  “That means it did play a role, but in subtle, unprovable ways.”

“Do you know why people didn’t talk to him directly about it?” asked a different writer, a woman with coke-bottle glasses.  “Was there a taboo, or was it beneath them to discuss it?”

“He said it was considered bad luck,” she said, and her face was admirably straight when she said it. 

“What kind of bad luck?”

Trip snickered, quietly, on his right.

“The kind where if you said it out loud, you’d wind up with a busted face,” said Steve.

They moved on.

  
  
  


“Captain Rogers, what were the biggest sources of conflict within the Commandos?”

“Women,” Steve answered immediately.  “Particularly the ladies in the French Resistance.  Monty, who was married, and I, we felt that it was more respectful of them to treat them just the same as we would have our male comrades.  Bucky, Dernier, Jim, and Gabe, on the other hand, treated them like male comrades they could sleep with.  And Dum Dum insisted on treating them all like dames, even when they could out-shoot, out-navigate, and out-spit him three rounds out of five.”

“How did you resolve it?”

“Uh.”  Steve felt himself slowly turning red as, belatedly, he remembered the answer to that particular question.  

  


_ Marie and Bucky were wedged into the pantry of the abandoned farmhouse, hands on each other’s hips, talking quietly.  Steve started cracking eggs into a bowl, whisking briskly with a fork.  They had found a hard little cheese, and there was fresh thyme in the garden; they‘d be eating well, today. _

_ He kept a watchful eye as he pulled the thyme from the stems, and he could see Marie looking from him to Bucky and back again, her slightly-thick eyebrows slowly coming down over her nose.   _

_ She said something, and Bucky shook his head, reluctantly.  Looked at Steve, then back at Marie.  Apologized, but no.   _

_ Marie slapped his hand away from her, spun and crossed to Steve. _

_ “Captain Rogers,” she snapped, her lovely contralto hard.  “Do I understand this correctly, that you have ordered us to restrain our affections?” _

_ “I have issued the command that the men are not to offer you ladies of the Resistance insult,” Steve said, using his strength to crumble the aging cheese.  “That includes propositioning you, yes.” _

_ “Truly?  If you truly do not wish to insult, I suggest that you trust us that we can decide our own minds.”  She reached out and took the bowl of eggs and herbs away from him.  “Still, I am glad to hear that the ban was on your men ‘propositioning’ us.” _

_ “Ma’am?” _

_ “I assume that  _ we  _ may still proposition  _ them?”   _ Her dark eyes flashed.  “I am a free woman of France, captain.  If I wish to invite any man into my bed -- or even, in this case, into my mouth on my knees in the kitchen of a farm that smells like dead sheep -- I will do so.  It is no business of yours.” _

_ “Ma’am?!” _

_ “Please leave the room, captain.  I think you would not want to stay.” _

_ Then she pulled off her shirt.  Steve looked down, looked back up, swallowed, and obediently fled the room. _

  


“The ladies explained that they would make it clear where the limits of respectful communications were,” he said now.  

Luckily, Nate Gauss was not looking at him, absorbed in his tablet, because if he’d seen what color Steve was, he probably wouldn’t have changed the subject until he knew the whole story.  “What was the second biggest source of conflict?”

“Cards,” Steve said gratefully.  “Everybody cheated.  Eventually - by about six months in - we had to give up on poker all together; too fractious. We started playing bridge instead.”

Trip leaned back in his chair.  “Way I heard it, Cap, you were the biggest cheater of the lot.”

Jeanine looked amused.  “That definitely matches what I heard.”

“Did you hear that people who have lost their chocolate ration for the third time in a row are  _ incredibly sore losers?” _ Steve asked, putting on a look of righteous indignation.  

Mike Phillips snorted, and Steve grinned and leaned back in his chair.  


	2. Lee

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which actors discussing characters makes for good meta, Steve pretends to be a normal person for once (just as a trial sort of thing, you understand), and Darcy helps the readers understand why the hell Tony and Lee aren't together right now.

  


By the time they broke for lunch, Lee was starving.  “Come on,” he muttered to Isaac, “Let’s grab your girlfriend and go.”  

“She’s not my girlfriend,” Isaac protested automatically.

“And if you ever get together the balls to change that, let me know.  In the mean time, let’s grab our food and get out of here.  There’s an empty office on this level, we can go open a window.”

Jodie Smith was directing people in a line down the new pile of foodstuffs.  Isaac leaned down by her ear, murmuring, “If you get drinks, I’ll fix you a plate.”  

Yeah.  They weren’t boning _at all._

She nodded.  “Sure.  Where are we going?”

Isaac looked at Lee, who answered, “116a”, and she said, “Oooh, open window, nice!” because Jodie knew literally everything about the entire production.  Possibly the entire company.  

That was Lee’s theory, anyway; it had yet to be disproved.

Also, he was pretty sure she was the one responsible for putting “Captain America IRL” on Steve Rogers’ name tag.  

He made sure to load plenty of chocolate onto her plate.  

Lee and Isaac were quiet as the collapsed under the cracked window.  Lee set out the plates on the floor (because the abandoned office had no furniture for now), and they sat cross-legged, leaning up against the wall.  Isaac shot him a questioning look, then when Lee waved him on, lit a cigarette, leaning it on the sill directly beneath the open window.

 _The Howling Commandos_  was a good project, Lee reflected, thinking about what he’d seen this morning.  Triplett, Phillips, and Morita had been good sports, talking about relatives they’d clearly loved.  

Lee was guessing that Morita had much the same personality as her father, based on the way Captain America had looked at her and angled his body towards her:  like someone interesting, like a friend, but not a sexual interest.  Respect.  And he’d always smiled, just a flicker in the corner of his mouth, when she said something tart.  He hopes Isaac and Ken had spotted that.

Phillips had gotten instant respect from the Captain, and Lee thought about what he’d said this morning, about hiding idealism under a pragmatic exterior.  Most of their sources talked about conflict between the Captain the Colonel, but that wasn’t what he’d seen today.  Lee made a mental note to ask more about that relationship, if it wasn’t covered in interviews this afternoon.  

Although, who knew when Lee would get the chance?

Fuck it, maybe he could _email_ Captain America.

And speaking of Captain America…   Lee opened his eyes, and watched Isaac, assessing.  He was mirroring Lee’s posture, head tilted back against the wall, drawing on the cig then aiming the smoke out the window.  Not touching his food, which was a problem; given his build, he had to be starving.  Lee said, “Hey,” and Isaac opened his eyes, looking a little wild.

 _Yeah, time for a check in,_ Lee thought.  

“Okay, first thing:  eat something, you’re hungry.”  Isaac flicked a smile Lee had last seen on Steve Rogers’ face, and Lee wondered if Isaac was one of those method people who tried to stay in character all the time, or if Isaac just had the same smile.  Isaac had a lot of other things in common with Rogers, though, so probably that second one.

“Second thing:  How you doing?”

Isaac gave a little groan, chewing and swallowing.  

“That bad, huh?”

Head shake.  “No, but a little overwhelming.  You realize there are _three_ of him?”

Lee frowned.  “No.  What?”

“He’s got three of him.  I get that, I do, I have two of me, and God, I’ll probably have three by the end of this….”  Isaac broke off.  “Huh.”  He tilted his head and frowned, and Lee gave him time to think.  Based on their acquaintance so far, whatever came out of his mouth would be worth it.   _And if we're talking about work, I might even get more than two sentences at a time..._

In the meantime, Lee had his own sandwich.

“Okay,” said Isaac, nodding to himself a little.  “So there’s Steve-Rogers-with-People, who is…”  Isaac sat up, hunching his shoulders, looking up a little at Lee, and all of a sudden Lee could _see_ it.

Isaac was actually pretty good, for a guy who hadn’t even finished his second year of acting school when he was cast.

“...a little more hesitant.  This is the big guy, who used to be a little guy, and hasn’t quite figured out that he isn’t, still.”

“Is there a Steve-Rogers-without-People?” Lee asked, curious.  Because he hadn’t been trying to figure out what Steve was like, he’d been trying to figure out what Steve’s friend _Bucky_ was like.

“No.  There’s a Steve-Rogers-with-his-Friends,” Isaac answered.  “You saw it a little, I think, when he started bantering with the FBI guys and the congresswoman?”

“Yeah.  That guy is a normal guy.  I like that guy.”

“Yeah,” Isaac echoed.  “I liked him, too.  And by the way, when you’re thinking about who Barnes is…”

Lee nodded.  “Barnes is the guy who saw through Steve-Rogers-with-People to find Steve-Rogers-with-Friends, and decided he wanted to see more of the second one.  Possibly he was the guy who _discovered_ the second one.”

“Possibly he was the guy who _built_ the second one.  What are _you_ like around people you’ve known since you were twelve?”

“Quiet,” Lee answered.

Isaac blinked.  

“Huh.  Really?”

Lee nodded.  “I have to really make an effort to be Charming -”  He always thought of it with the capital letter.  It was a role.  “- on set.”  He slugged Isaac lightly in the shoulder.  “It’s one of the reasons I like working with you; you’re quiet, too.”

Isaac’s smile was small, and very pleased.

“So okay.  That’s… not a bad jumping off point, actually.  Wasn’t ‘charming’ one of the top five words people always used for Barnes?”

“It’s the number two thing they always said about him, actually.  And the number one was that he was a good shot.”

“Have you done any research into the personality types of snipers?” Isaac asked, looking like he was chasing a tangent.

“No, but now I think maybe I should,” Lee answered.  “You said there were 'three,' though?”  

“Right.  The third is Captain America.”

“ _That_ guy,” Lee prompted.

Isaac took a deep breath.  “Yeah.  If I’d known then what I know now, they would never have cast me, but I’d have done a much better impression,” he said seriously.  “There’s the Face; it’s super-serious, but more important, it’s aware of what he’s doing.  Any time he’s pulling out the Captain Face, he’s playing a role.  

“Then there’s the Voice.  He normally has _kinda a Brooklyn accent, just a hint, ya know?”_

Lee knew.  He’d been working really hard not to be completely charmed by it, actually.

“Well, the Captain Voice is _Very Serious, neutral accent, and a half octave deeper.”_

Lee grinned.  “That’s magnificent.”

“Thank you!”  

Isaac had confessed, when they first met, that Lee was one of the actors he’d really admired; Lee had blown it off, pointing out that he worked on a _vampire detective series,_ but if it meant Isaac could hear his praise and believe it, Lee would take the admiration.

“The big thing, though,” Isaac continued, “Is the frequency.  He pulls out the Captain _way_ more often than I would have guessed--I think he pulls out the Captain way more often than the _writers_ have guessed, and that might actually wind up being a problem.”

Lee was already nodding, because he’d seen the same thing.  “Teddy bear,” he speculated, before realizing that might be a _non sequitur_ and starting to apologize and clarify.

“No, I get it, I thought the same thing.  And it makes sense:  Here’s this little guy from Brooklyn, grew up dirt poor, and now he’s hanging out with Howard Stark and running raids against HYDRA and beautiful women are throwing themselves at him, how’s he gonna handle that?”

“Be someone who belongs,” answered Lee.  

“Right.”  Isaac took another bite of his sandwich, thoughtfully.  

“I bet he does it more now, though,” said Lee, and Isaac chewed inquisitively at him.  “I mean, back then, he could retreat to the Howlies…”

They both rolled their eyes at each other, because _literally everyone other than Captain America_ said “the Commandos,” or even “the Howling Commandos”, and because “Howlies” sounded like a Little League team.

“...and just be Steve-Rogers-with-Friends.”

Isaac put down his sandwich, frowning at it for a moment, but whatever he was going to say was interrupted by a rap at the door.

Jodie stuck her head in, grinning at them.  “Boys!  Boys, guess what?  I found a stray!”

She bounced into the room, plopping a twelve-pack of Sprite down beside Isaac and helping herself to the chocolate on her plate, and Captain America shuffled into the room after her.

He ran a hand through the hair on the back of his head, and Lee watched the movement, watched his shoulders rise towards his ears.  

 _Steve-Rogers-with-People._ Jesus _,_ sometimes Isaac could be right on the money.

“He looked lonely,” Jodie was saying, “but also like he was going to snap and run into the street if one more person came up to him with their teeth out.  And that's literal _or_ metaphorical, some of those smiles--”

She was looking at Lee.   _Isaac_ was looking at Lee.   _Fuck, how did_ I _get put in charge of our pack?_

“Yeah,” Lee said, only rolling his eyes a little, really.  “Please, come on in.”

 _Shy little flicker of a smile.  Shoulders down a centimeter._  Well, Lee’d take it.

He’d also take a sprite, because the sandwiches had a lot of salt, thank you.  

“Please, help yourself to Jodie’s chocolate,” he invited the Captain.  “We were just talking about you.”

“Not in a creepy way,” Isaac broke in, looking slightly horrified.  Lee thought that was another expression he’d last seen on the captain’s face, earlier this morning.  “In a professional way.”

“Our profession can _be_ kind of creepy,” Lee pointed out, and Isaac grimaced an acknowledgement.

“Sorry,” he said to the Captain.

“That’s okay,” said Rogers.   _Shoulders back in neutral, voice very slightly Brooklyn._

Okay, then.

“Is it helping?” asked the Captain, and Lee held up a hand, palm down, wobbling it back and forth.  

“It’s helping me a lot,” Isaac offered.  “I’ve sorted through the character…  Uh, _your_ character…?”  He glanced at Lee for help, but it was Jodie who answered.

“Dude, there’s the guy on the show, and that’s _your_ character.  Then there’s the guy you’re talking to, who has _his own_ character.  You’ve gotta differentiate, it’ll get all confusing if you’re not clear.”

Isaac bumped her with his shoulder, flicker-smiling, and said to the Captain, “And to make matters worse, we were just saying that you probably have your own character-that-you-play, as well.”

“This is why I put IRL on the name tag,” Jodie said.  

“I _knew_ it,” Lee muttered.

“Easy labels:  Captain America, THC--”  She pointed at Isaac.  “--Captain America, IRL.”  She pointed at Rogers.

“Right, thanks,” said Isaac.

Jodie shrugged.  “I write RPF, it’s good practice.”

Lee was _never going to think about that again._    

Isaac continued, “All right.  So this is helping me, a _lot_ , with the-character-I-play.  Captain America, THC.”

“Good.”  And, damnit, that was not Brooklyn-y _at all,_ so now they were back to dealing with Captain Voice.

“But I don’t think it’s helping Lee that much, because for whatever reason, no one is asking you about Barnes.”

“They may be saving it for this afternoon,” said Rogers, and Lee and Isaac both blinked, hard, at his tone.   Then looked at each other.  Lee had a moment to think that they could lampshade this or deny, but he’d had enough of lying to people, really, so fuck it, lampshading it was.  

“That was the most Captainy yet,” Lee observed.  

Isaac shrugged.  “It’s personal,” he mentioned, like he wasn’t sure whether or not it was relevant.  

Lee nodded.  “Armor,” he agreed, then asked the Captain, “Sound about right?”

Rogers’ jaw was slightly slack, but he closed it, and gamely said, “Yes, actually.  He was…” A wry twist of the lips.  “...He was my best friend.  And he was really important to me.”  And then he finished, “And he’s really only been dead a year.”

All three of them jerked back.  

 _“Jesus,”_ said Isaac, eyes wide.  

 _“Fuck,”_ agreed Lee.  “That seems…  really cruel and tacky.  To make it this soon.”

“Ohmigod,” said Jodie, “You poor baby.”  And she wasn’t being snide _at all_ with that; she meant it.

Then, because she was Jodie, she leaned over and gave Captain America a hug.

Rogers looked astonished, and maybe a little alarmed as she climbed into his lap, but when she held on, and didn’t make a move, and neither Lee nor Isaac said anything (although they probably looked like they wanted to hug him, too, because _Jesus Christ),_ he calmed down, closed his eyes, and hugged her back.  

Lee gave them a minute, nudging Isaac and taking a significant bite of his sandwich.  Isaac followed suit, breaking eye contact and giving Rogers some space.

When she eventually climbed off his lap, Jodie immediately handed him the plate loaded with chocolate.  “Eat up,” she said, and he was able to say “thanks” and pretend it was for the baked goods.

There was a companionable silence, then, as they all proved that they were able to consume ridiculous portions of food if not distracted.  After a while, though, Lee kind of felt obligated to break it.  “Damn it,” he said.  “Look, I’m sorry.  This is going to suck.”

Rogers froze, mouth full of meatball sub.  He probably said, “Oh?”, but to be honest it was kind of hard to tell.  

“Look, just--don’t blame me, all right, but I think you should know this.”

Rogers swallowed.  “What’s going on?” he asked.

“Just…  Did you know you were a major icon of the LGBT scene?”

Judging by that expression, no, no he had not.  Neither had Isaac.  

Jodie definitely knew, though.

“And it’s because of Barnes.”

And judging by _that_ expression, Lee had better talk _fast_.  

Jodie beat him to it.

“You broke orders, ducking umpteen miles behind the lines, and rescued 200 prisoners of war from a HYDRA factory for Barnes.  Then you put him and five other guys on your team, even though realistically all six of them should have been going home.   _Then,_ he _died_ , and three weeks later you were crashing a plane into the Atlantic, which a lot of people think is _teh most romantic thing, ever.”_

She actually said “teh”.  

“So yeah, a lot of people thought you were boning, and mostly, they think it’s super-romantic.  And that’s the real reason no one’s asking you about Barnes.”

Rogers looked at Isaac, his eyes so wide that Lee could see all the blue.  Isaac shrugged apologetically, and passed the look to Lee, who grimaced.  ‘You have a reputation for telling the truth,” he told Rogers quietly.  “They’re kind of afraid of what you’ll say.”

Rogers looked down, not saying anything for a long minute.  Then he said, “Oh,” most likely because he had to say _something,_ and took a bite of the meatball sub.

That…  did not exactly clarify the issue.

Lee made an executive decision.  “Look,” he said.  “Isaac doesn’t care, because the fact that you’re kind of introverted and grew up sickly  is going to affect his portrayal more than your sexual orientation.  And it’s none of Jodie’s business, whatever she thinks.”  

Jodie stuck her tongue out at him, but didn’t disagree.  

“But me?  I’m going to need to know, because the kind of guy you’d be friends with, and the kind of guy you’d be lovers with, those are two different guys.  And I don’t actually have that much else to go on.  Barnes didn’t have kids, he never met his nephew, and I know as well as anything that ‘Charming’ can be a facade.”

Rogers was looking at him steadily.  “Because you play that role yourself,” he said, not really guessing, and okay, he was right, but also…

Lee snorted.  “Because I worked for five years with Mason Reed.”

Rogers frowned a little in confusion, but Jodie replied.  “Awwww, you mean he’s not really as great as he seems in his interviews?  Suck!  Spoil my fun!”

Lee rolled his eyes at her, and smirked a little.  “Believe me, he’s _all_ yours.”

In the small beat of silence that followed, the sound of a Sprite popping open was unnaturally loud.  Isaac handed it to the Captain.  “You don’t have to answer now,” he said.  “Or at all.  You can keep it private.  And it won’t change how they write it, because the ratings will be highest if they keep things ambiguous.”  He smiled, open and straightforward, and Lee suddenly realized he was seeing _Lieutenant Greeley._ Which was weird.

And a little hot.  

“We’d like to know, though.  We’d like to do right by you.  Both of you.”

Rogers watched him for a moment, then sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly.  “Yeah,” he said.  “Thank you.”

Jodie rolled to her feet, packing up the used plates and plastic forks, leaving the one with the baked goods in the Captain’s lap.  “For the record,” she said, “It’s still the most romantic thing ever, even if you and Barnes weren’t lovers.  Some of us know the value of friendship.”

Rogers tracked his thumb through the condensation on his soda can.  “Okay,” he murmured, then said it again louder, sounding almost reckless.  “Okay.  Speaking of the power of friendship.  I promised a friend of mine that we could go out tomorrow, to celebrate her relocation to New York City.  She’s asked me to bring friends."  His chin came up, but not quite enough to hide the panic in his eyes.  "Want to come?”

Isaac’s eyes widened.  “Did Captain America just invite us to go clubbing with him?” he asked.  

“Ohmigod,” said Jodie.  “ _Please_ tell me Captain America just invited us clubbing.”

“Please tell me your ‘friend’ isn’t the Black Widow,” said Lee, who thought that was both a possibility and a concern.

“My friend is a perfectly normal scientist named Darcy Lewis, who works for another scientist named Jane Foster.  They just moved here from London last week.”  He paused.  “They might _know_ the Black Widow, though.”  He shrugged.  “I won’t promise she _won’t_ be there.”

“I’m coming,” said Jodie quickly.  

Isaac looked a little worried.  “Your friend Darcy…  She won’t mind you bringing strangers?”

The Captain smiled.  “Darcy and Jane are both very friendly ladies,” he said, and suddenly Brooklyn was _all over_ his voice.  

And his shoulders were down.  

And there were teeth in his smile.

“I’m in,” said Lee, hoping like hell he wasn't going to regret this.

“Alright,” said Isaac.  Then he paused.  “Uh… do _any_ of you have a destination in mind?”

They didn’t, it turned out; Rogers ended up letting Jodie and Isaac choose a club, requesting only that it be clean and reasonably cheap.  Jodie picked one that was near Columbia, targeted to grad students and priced accordingly, and Rogers texted the location to his friend Darcy as they trooped back towards the conference room.  

  
  


It turned out, Rogers was wrong.  They didn’t ask about Barnes at all that afternoon.

  
  


The club was dark and loud, and Lee would have turned around and dragged Isaac and Jodie right back out again, except that Rogers and friends had beaten them there.  He was sitting next to two petite brunettes, and looking 34% less likely to snap and run into traffic than he had at any point the previous day.  

Isaac nudged Lee’s ribs.  “Shoulders,” he said directly into Lee’s ear, the only way he was going to be heard, and Lee nudged him back because shouting was too much effort.  

Steve (they were clubbing together, they could definitely be on first-name basis) introduced Jane Foster and Darcy Lewis, neither of whom appeared to be the Black Widow, although Lee wasn’t letting his guard down yet.  He also waved a hand at a blond man coming back from the bar with a bottle and a stack of shot glasses in one hand, and, impossibly, _six_ beer bottles held in the other.  “That’s Clint,” Steve yelled.  “He is also not the Black Widow.”

Okay, it was possible Steve was dishing out some shit.  

“Ohmigod,” said Jodie.  “Your boobs, I love them!  Give them to me!”

“Ohmigod,” said Darcy.  “Your nose piercing is _sooooo cuuuuute!”_

“Ohmigod,” said Clint.  “Tequila!”  

The night went downhill from there.  

  
  


There were shots -- Tequila went weirdly well with apple ale, it turned out -- and Jane Foster’s smile was a little evil when she explained that Tony Stark had waved a credit card at her and said, “Have fun.”  

  
  


There was also dancing.  Later, Lee would remember finding himself with Jodie pressing in on one side, and Darcy (whose boobs, Jodie was right, were _completely epic)_ pressing nicely against him from the other, and one of them was wearing a floral scent which managed to overwhelm the odor of stale beer that filled the club.  He had no idea how he had gotten there, but it was a hell of a place to be.

  
  


The other thing Lee would remember clearly was looking back, over Darcy (not hard to do, she was pretty short), and seeing Steve, Jane, and Isaac sitting at their little bar table.  Jane was talking, waving her hands dramatically as she told them some story, and Steve and Isaac were listening, looking like twins as they focused on her with a sort of serious lightness on their faces.  Lee was struck by a sudden urgent sense of _move:_ get over there, be with them, take care of them, catch them when they fall.

That suddenly took a turn from the metaphorical to the literal as Jane slowly toppled like a Jenga stack, collapsing onto Isaac, who looked up at Steve with a startled expression.  Steve grinned, and then Isaac caught the grin (much larger than his usual tight smile), and then Clint showed up with more ciders, and Jodie said in his ear, “Oooooh, cider, why aren’t we over there?”

Darcy answered, “Because as long as we’re dancing I get to grind against this perfect, perfect ass, and I don’t want to give that up.”

“Suck it up, I want booze,” said Jodie, and Lee let himself be pulled along with them towards the table.

Then he pulled Darcy into his lap when they sat down, nuzzling into all those beautiful curls.  “I like your hair,” he told her.  “It smells _great.”_

Possibly he’d had enough tequila.

She petted his head, and Lee grinned, resting his head on her shoulder.  With her sitting on his lap, he barely had to duck his head at all.  

The company was good, the ale was delicious, and he was just the right amount of drunk to be uninhibited without being worried about it.  Life was _excellent._

And then the _Darkest Night_ theme song’s opening bars sounded.  

“Shit,” Lee muttered, pulling the phone out of his pocket.  It had only been the opening phrase, so it was a text, not a phone call.  He didn’t think he could have handled a phone call.  

He was very sure he didn’t want to handle a phone call, not with a hundred and forty pounds of beautiful woman sitting on him.  

He opened the phone one-handed, the left still curled around Darcy as close up under her ribs as he thought she would let him, and read the message from Tony just as a second one came through.

 ** _The Ex:_ ** _Hey, just a heads up from over here, if you’re thinking of being back in the area any time soon, don’t.  
_**_The Ex:_ ** _And don’t worry, it’s not the end of the world, and I’m fine.  It’s just some shit going down. For three weeks or so.  I hope._

 Then, as Lee was staring at them, a third:

  ** _The Ex:_ ** _Be safe._

 The little cloud with an ellipsis in it appeared and disappeared again for a minute, but no fourth text came.

Darcy leaned back into him, reading over his shoulder.  “Dude, you still text with your ex?  That is some brave shit right there.”

“Mostly stuff like this,” Lee said, frowning.

“What _is_ ‘stuff like this’, anyway?” she pouted.  “She’s being all cryptic.”

Lee was still looking at the phone, where the little flashing ellipsis had finally disappeared for good.  “Trouble,” he said, texting back, _ok, stay safe,_ and putting his phone away.

  
  


Lee woke up with a pounding headache, relaxed muscles, and a naked Darcy.  

Darcy woke up to a pounding headache, relaxed muscles, and a naked Lee, whose erection was pressing against her thigh.  Well, it was morning.

They drank their water and downed their aspirin, and then she pounced, rubbing her frankly magnificent body against his until he gave up on sleep and rolled them so that she was on top.  Afterwards, she spilled off of him and threw her fists in the air triumphantly, shouting, “GO TEAM!”

It was almost perfectly what he wanted.

  


When they were done, they slept again, waking up at 1:30 to too-bright lights and a flock of text messages.  

 From Isaac:

 ** _Isaac (Cap):_ ** _I hope things went as well as they looked!  Text me in the morning!  
_**_Isaac (Cap):_ ** _Or the afternoon, I guess!_

 And Jodie:

 ** _Jodie Smith:_ ** _Woohooooo, and Tits McAwesome knocks it out of the park!_  
**_Jodie_** **_Smith:_** _Tell your girl I want to take her to lunch some time, but I don't have her number._  
**_Jodie Smith:_ ** _THEN GET ME HER NUMBER!_  
**_Jodie Smith:_ ** _We can talk about minioning and how sexy you are, it'll be great_  
**_Jodie Smith:_ ** _I will text her pictures of you and Isaac on set, being all shirtless and homoerotic at each other._  
**_Jodie Smith:  (_ ** _You KNOW it’s coming)  
_**_Jodie Smith:_ ** _(So to speak)_

In Lee's case, there was also a congratulatory email from his publicist, who wanted to know who the young lady was and what would be happening with her in the future, in a note attached to a photo of the two of them at the bar.  In the photo, Darcy sat on his lap, looking all cuddly next to Isaac and Jodie, Clint and Jane, who could almost look like couples if you squinted.  The angle of the photo completely blocked out Steve, sitting behind Lee and Clint.  

“Well, that’s completely awesome and misleading,” Lee muttered.

He made a mental note to text his mother and let her know it Wasn’t A Thing.  She got excited, sometimes.

“Oooh, good picture!”  Darcy was apparently looking over his shoulder.  Lee looked back at her, and took a moment to appreciate.

“Drunk me has excellent taste,” he noted, rubbing back into her with his shoulder.  

“Yeah?  Drunk _me_ has excellent _friends_ ,” Darcy retorted, and, shit!   _Licked his ear!_

“Gah!”  Lee turned to her with wide eyes, and she grinned at him, saucy.

“Note to self:  do that again,” she said, then reached over him to grab her phone off the night stand.

Lee decided turnabout was fair play, and read over her shoulder:  

 _J_ ** _ane Foster:_ ** _You are never allowed to complain about me and Thor again._  
**_Jane Foster:_ ** _Jesus_  
**_Jane Foster:_ ** _just  
_**_Jane Foster:_ ** _Have fun, don't get herpes, call me if you need a ride back to the tower._

 “I do not have herpes,” he said, grumpy.  

“Good to know!  Although really, it’s way more widespread than people think, almost half the adult population has it.”

Lee eyeballed her, suspicious.

“Not me, that I know of,” she reassured him, “Although, too late now if I did.  But I don’t!”  

 ** _Steve Rogers:_ ** _Tony says that since I took you out, I have to get you home.  
_**_Steve Rogers:_ ** _So let me know when you’re ready for a ride back to the tower._

 “Oh, hey, give me his number,” said Lee.  “I think he meant us to have it, but he never did pass it on, and I don’t trust that any of us were sober enough to think of it last night.”

“Sure,” she said, and grabbed his phone, entering the contact info, and sending a text:

  ** _Lee:_ ** _This is Darcy on Lee’s phone!  Pick me up at three?_

 Lee frowned.  “You know I can give you a ride back, right?”  

“Dude, the last thing you need is a photo of me getting out of your car the day after that other one got taken.  It’s cool, I think Steve needs to feel useful, anyway.”

Lee shrugged.  “All right.  That skirt you were wearing is probably no good on my bike, anyway.”

Darcy paused.  “You have a bike?  Like, a motorcycle?”

Lee waggled his eyebrows at her, and she giggled.  “I guess it goes with the piercings,” she said, flicking the one in his nipple with her finger.  

Lee yelped, and covered it.  “That is _sensitive,”_ he informed her.  

She giggled again, then watched as he texted his mother:

 _L_ ** _ee:_ ** _Mom do not panic._  
**_Lee:_ ** _She is very nice, but it is not serious._  
**_Lee:_ ** _Yet._  
**_Lee:_ ** _Right now it’s all potential.  
_**_Lee:_ ** _DO NOT GET EXCITED_

 And read a text from Vancouver.

 ** _Scary Amy:_ ** _Good job, Captain Suddenly Straight Again.  
_**_Scary Amy:_ ** _For a minute there, I thought you might be a real person!_

 Lee scowled, texting back from the self-conscious, hungover rage that swamped him without warning.

 ** _Lee:_ ** _That's Sargent Suddenly Straight Again._  
**_Lee:_ ** _who I wouldn't have been hired to play if they didn't think I was straight.  
_**_Lee:_ ** _so fuck off_

 Then he remembered and looked up at Darcy, who was watching him with wide eyes.  “Dude!” she said.  “You’re gay?”

“I am _not gay,”_ Lee said.  Then sighed, because that reaction was not really her fault.  “Technically, I’m bi, but since that’s probably a big no-no for anyone who wants to play,” he cast his voice down into the show-announcer range, “ _the closest companion of Captain America…”_

“Oh, shit, yeah, that would not be cool,” Darcy said.  “I don’t mean really; really, it would be very cool, but I can see network execs being less than thrilled about it.  Controversial, right?  And they can’t legally fire you for it, but they can say they fired you for some other reason when it’s totally the gay thing.  Or, sorry, bi, I guess.  Still.”  She pointed her finger at him.  “Your ass would totes be grass.”

 _“Thank you,”_ said Lee, who had argued with nearly a dozen people about this very issue.

Okay, seven.  Point remained.

She swallowed, watching him out of the corner of her eye.  “So,” she said, and her voice was really not as bright or cheery as she thought it was.  She sounded… hurt.  And nervous.  “Was this a… beard thing?”

Lee met her anxious gaze.

Looked down, eyes travelling over every lush curve, every pale expanse and tempting shadow.

Looked back up again.

“No,” he said flatly.

“Oh,” she said.  She sounded a lot happier.

He sighed.  “It _was_ a casual sex thing, though,” he added, reluctantly, and her eyes snapped back to his.  “My last relationship…”

“The ex who texts you crazy threats about not coming back into town because it might not be safe?” she asked, voice dubious, then her eyes widened.  “Oh shit, was that a guy?”

“That was Tony,” Lee said carefully.  “He -- hey, it wasn’t a threat!”

“Sure,” she said, skeptical.  “Totally sounded like one, though!”

“It was a _heads up,_ ” Lee insisted.  

Sighed.

“Look, Tony was…  It was serious, okay?”  

She watched him, careful, waiting for the rest.

“He…  He was the first guy, the first person who could… do what he did, the second one I ever thought about marrying…”  

“Oh shit, the M word?!”

“Yeah.”  Lee was done with the naked thing.  He tossed his phone on the nightstand and went to dig some clean underwear out of the pile.

“So why’d you split?”

Lee closed his eyes, then opened them again and kept fishing through the clean laundry drawer.  “The closet,” he answered.  “And the distance.”

And the clench that came over him every time Tony got called on to save the world again.  Tony would go out there, smirking that sexy, confident smirk, and Lee would just… watch, helpless to do more than hope he’d come home.

Also (and this one he was never, ever vocalizing), Lee’d been tired of being the Damsel.  It didn’t matter that _Tony_ didn’t think of him that way; Lee had started thinking of _himself_ that way, and it was fucking with his self-worth.  

He eyeballed Darcy, who had probably never thought of herself as a Damsel in her life.

Maybe something Lee could work on.

Darcy chewed her lip, then shifted out of bed and came to stand beside him, folding clothes as he tossed them aside.  “So, the best way to describe this might be _rebound fling?”_ she asked.

 _“Yes,”_ Lee agreed.  Then he made a triumphant noise and grabbed a clean towel out of the pile, setting it aside on the foot of the bed.  “That’s for you, in case I don’t find another clean one,” he sidetracked.

“Hey, thanks,” she said.  “Soooo…”

He watched her fold a t-shirt, then pulled a pair of boxers away before she could reach for them.  “No,” he said.  “We do not fold underwear in this house.  Not happening.”

She nodded, took a deep breath, and then spit out, “So, do you _want_ a beard?” like it was going to burn if it stayed behind her teeth.

Lee stared.  “Uh.  No?  Wait, are you saying you want a relationship?  Like, a _faux_ relationship?”

She folded another pair of pants.  “I’m saying, you’re hot, I like you, I like hanging out with you, and I would like to spend more time hanging out with you and also having ridiculously good sex --”

“Oh, hey, thank you.”

“-- but I really don’t need a relationship, and dates seem like kind of a waste of time.”

“So...  Friends with benefits?”

“No, I mean…  Well, okay, I guess I do mean that, but in this case the benefits include being okay with being photographed snuggling with you?  For the press, I mean?”

Lee frowned.  “You heard me when I said I’m not actually gay, right?”

“Yeah, but you want to seem straight, and that’s two different kettles of bilgesnipes.”

Lee thought about it while they folded the rest of the clothes.  They found _two_ towels, which he was counting a win.

“Okay,” he said eventually.  “So, I see two problems.  One of them is that this isn’t really fair to you…”  He held up a hand to stop her when she opened her mouth.  “...which you have already solved by volunteering, because you are a grown woman who knows her own mind.”

She grinned.  

“But, maybe think about it?  Or at least reassure me that you _have_ thought about it?”

“Okay,” she said.  “I’ve thought about it.  Seriously, it’s fine.”

“Alright then.  The other problem is that I don’t agree with the whole friends with benefits premise.”

“Because you’re _so opposed_ to casual sex?” she asked dubiously, and that would be a point for her, if that had been what he meant.  

“No,” he said, “because it doesn’t _stay_ casual.  If it’s someone you like well enough to have sex with them, it’s probably someone you like well enough to develop stronger feelings for them.  And there is a terrible potential that I will do just that, and then I’ll fuck it up, and that potential gets bigger the longer this goes on.”  He shrugged.  “Add in that I’m still pretty firmly on the rebound, and you see the problem.”

She tossed two clean towels over her shoulders.  “So put an end date on it,” she said casually.  

“What?”

“It’s early August,” she said.  “Want to break up on Halloween?  Look, I’ma go shower so I don’t stink when I get into a car with Captain America.  You think about it, talk to me when I’m clean.”

So Lee sat on the edge of the bed, and thought about it while she got clean.

  
  



	3. Steve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the Steve Rogers Needs A Hug tag is well and truly earned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edited chapter for formatting; the speech Steve's working on is kind of long and rambling, and I thought about taking it out, but it's got some good character moments in it. So I put it in a block-quote to make it skip-able, as you please.

  


Darcy Lewis was glowing happily as she bounded out down the steps.  “Hey Steve!” she caroled, stretching up to kiss him on the cheek.  (He bent down a little for her.  It seemed polite.)

“Hey,” he greeted.  “Doing alright?”  Not that the answer wasn’t obvious, but he thought it was a good idea to check anyway.

Just in case.

She beamed at him, though.  “Doing the _best!”_ she assured him, then fanned herself and wagged her eyebrows.  Steve laughed and held the door of Tony’s Roadster for her.  

“What about Lee?” he teased.  “Still kicking?”

“Doing more than kicking,” she assured him lasciviously.  

“I don’t need details,” he informed her.  

“Yeah, no, I won’t share them with you.”  Darcy had a really great smile.  It lit up her face and made her seem a little less world-weary than she normally was, and she was using it now as she added, “That’s what I have Jane for.”

Steve silently wished Jane the best of luck.

“So is this a... thing… now?” he asked, waving up at the apartment building in a way that he hoped conveyed _you and Lee_.

“Us stealing Tony’s cars?”

Apparently, waving was not a success.

“No.  We are borrowing Tony’s car, with his permission.”  He paused.  “...Would you _like_ that to be a thing?”

“Steve.  Have you seen his cars?  He’s got a fuckin’ Lambo!  Yes, I would like that to be a thing!”

Alright then.

“But no, Lee and I are not a thing.  Well, we are.  Not a big thing?”  She wrinkled her nose, the laughed again.  “We’re breaking up the week before Halloween.”

“Wait, what?  How do you know that?  And why?”

“Because Halloween is a busy time for him, he said.”  Steve shot her a look as he shifted gears.  “No, but there’s reasons,” she said.  “He’s rebounding from a really big relationship that ended badly, he’s totes not ready to commit to my awesome.”

Steve made a _hmm_ noise.  

She narrowed her eyes at him.  “You are totally judging that, aren’t you?  You are being all 1940’s proper and judgy on our asses!”

Steve snorted.  “I won’t deny that there were words we used then to describe what you’ve just described to me.  But what I was _actually_ thinking is that they don’t really apply anymore.”  He was silent as they drove past two skyscrapers, trying to think how to say it.  

“What I was thinking,” he finally said slowly, “Was that the world had changed.  And _back in my day…”_

It was a phrase that always sounded old, and Steve tried to either avoid it, or, when he couldn’t do that, accompany it with the largest eye-roll he could.  He probably still sounded ridiculous, but maybe a little less so.

 _“..._ yeah, what you are doing would be a reason to judge.  But _back in my day,_ women were less likely to work outside the home, effective contraception was hard to come by, and men were discouraged from discussing their emotions.”  He made a right-turn onto Madison.  “Those words I’m not using were made by pressures, like that rock…”  He waved a hand in a circle, trying to remember, to express himself in the face of her wary expression.

“Sedimentary?” she suggested, propping her feet up over the glove compartment.

“Exactly.  Sedimentary.  Lack of identity outside of the family and personal or social consequences of intimacy for women; perceived weakness from identifying emotions for a man…"  He briefly let go of the wheel to stack his hands on top of one another.  "They built up like layers on people, and the pressures of them produced concepts that just don’t exist in a world without those layers.”  He looked over and smiled at her.  “So, like I said:  The world has changed.  Might even be a good thing.”  

Darcy looked at him thoughtfully.  “You know,” she said, “You’re really not as stodgy as you want people to think you are.”

Steve smiled more broadly, inexplicably touched...  

“Thank you.”  

...And used the Captain Voice.  “Now get your feet off the dash.”

  
  


Steve went back to the HBO building on Thursday.  The general feeling of the appropriate people (some mix of Hill, Fury, and HBO executives) was that if Steve had time available, it would be good for him to spend it consulting for the show once every couple of weeks during the filming season.  That wasn’t a large time commitment, but it was enough to raise Steve’s eyebrows.  He’d asked Hill about it...

_“Why are you really sending me back?  I don’t mind, but come on.  This is hardly saving-the-world level stuff.”_

_One dark, wing-like brow rose, and the ghost of a smile hovered over her mouth._

_“For one thing,” she said, “The good will of the sort of people who run companies like Time Warner - which, in turn, is the company that owns HBO - is valuable, especially to an organization like SHIELD, which may need a news story spread or sunk at any time.”_

_“And the other thing?”_

_She shrugged.  “You looked like you were having fun.”_

_He narrowed his eyes.  “You saw the pictures from the club, didn’t you?”_

_“Oh, yeah.”  She patted his shoulder as she showed him out of the office.  “But it’s good for you to make friends.”_

So Thursday afternoon, Steve braved the dreary weather that had been sitting on the city for three days, taking Tony’s Porsche over to the HBO building.  He parked and walked over to the elevator, noting that some brave soul had ridden their motorcycle in.  

Once inside, he went to the information desk, only to be told that _The Howling Commandos_ (which everyone was calling THC) was filming at a location in Jersey.  The receptionist breathlessly passed him the address, though, and Steve made out an autograph with his stage smile before heading back down to the Porsche.   

 

> **_Steve Rogers:_ ** _It looks like I’m taking your car more than a few blocks, after all.  They’re apparently on location in Jersey.  
>  _ **_Tony Stark:_ ** _Ew.  
>  _ **_Tony Stark:_ ** _If you get Jersey dirt on my car, you get to wash the car._

The location in Jersey turned out to be an old rocking horse factory, old enough to have original wooden handrails and visible cinder blocks.  Steve had gone down three hallways and was twelve feet away from the rooms set aside for the cast before he realized what setting it was meant to portray.  He swallowed hard against the sudden sour taste in the back of his throat, and thankfully came through the hallway to see Lee sprawled on a couch wearing a ragged-looking costume (but, for some reason, no shoes), laughing silently at the antics of two other actors, who were wearing sweats and T-shirts and arguing like husband and wife on the other side of a coffee table set with snacks.

Steve knocked, and they looked up.  He tried not to notice how pleased Lee looked when he said, “Steve!  Come on in, the other guys will be back in a minute.  Did you pass the receptionist on the way in?”

Steve shook his head.  “No.  I saw Jodie, though.”  She’d been the first person he saw with a headset on after he got lost and started looking for directions; she’d greeted him with a one-armed hug and a smile, then given him precise directions to this room and gone back to her previous conversation, all without letting go of the pressure she was putting on the handle of what looked an awful lot like his first shield.  

“Eh, that works.  She has a headset, so Nate’ll find out you’re here and come down.”

Lee introduced the other two actors, Tim and Daniel, who, it turned out, were playing Zola and Schmidt.  

Steve blinked.  

“I guess that makes sense,” he admitted.  “I hadn’t really thought about it, but somebody has to play the villain.”

“And I am _so_ excited about it,” Tim gushed.  “Zola is, like, one of _the_ most relatable villains of the modern age, you can absolutely see what drove him, every step of the way.  It’s not like cartoony evil, it’s guy-next-door evil.  It’s fabulous.”  

Steve kind of thought his face might be showing his reaction to that, because Daniel gave him a practiced smile.  “He’s looking at it as an artist,” he assured Steve.  “If you think about it, though, people committing monstrosities because they aren’t thinking about the role their actions play in the larger world…  Well, that’s basically the standard story for Nazis, isn’t it?  And my character is basically _Everything Wrong with Friedrich Nietzsche: the TV show._ ”  Daniel had a matinee handsomeness which he used to good effect, tilting his head and showing teeth.  “So really, Tim and I are providing the morality for the show…  It’d be nothing without us for contrast.”

“I suppose so,” Steve allowed, “But I think the reverse is true, too.”

“That a show with no _good_ characters is as amoral as one with no _bad_ ones?  Absolutely,” agreed Daniel.  “Although an argument could be made that any show like that will be too depressing to serve as any kind of a role model.”

 _“Chicago,”_ countered Tim.

“Entertaining, but I would say still morally bankrupt,” argued Daniel.  “Although it did significantly kickstart Queen Latifah’s acting career, so it at least has some redeeming value.”

“Women I would go straight for, number sixteen,” agreed Tim fervently.  “Did you see her in _Hairspray?”_  

Lee rolled his eyes.  “These two used to do a comedy show together, literally,” he warned Steve.  “They can do this all day.”  He swung his sock-clad feet to the ground and indicated that the seat next to him was now free.  “In fact, they’ve _been doing it_ all day.”

Steve took the seat with a nod of thanks, and Lee passed him a Sprite.  

“So where are the others?” Steve wondered.  

“Isaac’s breaking the Commandos out; Lee’s still here because he’s supposed to be strapped to a table in my lab, right now,” Tim said.  

Steve paused.  “That sounds... very odd,” he said, and Lee nodded.  

“We’ve been struggling with it all week,” said Nate from the doorway.  “General consensus is, none of us can stand to say Howlies.”  He slipped into the room, propping a laptop on the snack covered table.  “Jesus, will one of you eat this stuff, please, it’s in my way.”

Well, if it was helpful, then.  Steve took a cookie.

“Here,” Nate said, pulling up a file on the laptop, “These are the -”  He stopped, looking at Steve, and changed what he had been going to say.  “These are sort of a first draft of the scenes we shot this morning.  No music, sound mixing, or visual effects, only basic editing, just raw footage and sound.”  

“So, not a final product, then.”  Steve took a couple cookies, this time; they were pretty good.

“Definitely not,” agreed Nate.  “But take a look at it.  This is your first look at our Zola and Schmidt, so let us know if there’s something obviously wrong with it.”

“Okay,” Steve agreed, and Nate pressed play.

Fascinated, Steve watched as the camera stayed close behind well-shined black boots going down a dimly-lit hallway.  (Steve squinted; it looked an awful lot like the hallway he’d just gone down to get here.)  Slowly, it allowed him to pull ahead, becoming a full-body shot in time for Tim (Steve couldn’t think of him as Zola) to stumble out of the room ahead of him, clutching a briefcase full of papers, which you could tell because the papers were falling out.  Tim’s face was panicked behind his thick glasses, his posture subservient as he looked at Daniel.  

Daniel’s back was straight and unyielding, his tone abrupt as he instructed Tim to destroy the research.  Tim argued that there wasn’t time, the enemy forces seemed to have reached too far into the facility.  (Steve snorted.  “I’m not sure I count as forces,” he said, and Tim pouted, “Well, _they_ didn’t know that.”)

“We will have to escape,” the Tim on the screen insisted.  

Daniel, as Schmidt, gave him a withering glare, then turned to stare, eerily, right at the camera.  

Nate paused it.

“That’s something we’re playing around with doing more of,” he explained.  “Right in this scene, it works either way, because he’s actually looking back down the hallway, but we were thinking that you and he might be the only ones who make eye contact with the camera as a sort of homage to you two having gotten versions of the serum.”

Steve looked dubiously at the screen of the laptop, thinking about it.  “It looks kinda funny, actually,” he decided, shaking his head.  “And it’ll look funnier when Bucky’s doing it, too; I mean, he got a version of the serum, too, right?  Or did you only mean successful versions?”

Four sets of eyes blinked at him.

 _“What?”_ Lee asked, with an incredulous little laugh.

Steve looked around the room, seeing nothing but confusion.  “Was that supposed to be classified?” he asked.  “I read the list of things I wasn’t allowed to talk about, and I don’t remember seeing that on it.”  No one answered, and he added, voice a lot harder, “My memory’s pretty good, so if it was on the Classified list, I would definitely know that.”

Still no answer.  Nate and Lee looked at each other, and shrugged.  

Daniel gave a little sigh, then tossed his used coke can into the trash.  “Maybe no one knew,” he suggested.  

Steve sat back on the couch, propping on ankle on the other knee.  “We - the Howlies and I - we all knew.  And I definitely reported that it looked like they’d been experimenting on him; there were about five people present at the debrief after Azzano, and Colonel Phillips and Agent Carter were two of them.  But the Howlies and I didn’t realize he was… _different…_ until we were in the field.  It’d be our third mission, I think, when he took that trick shot from the tree.”

“What was the shot?” asked Lee.

“Hmm?  Oh,” Steve started, settling in to tell the story, “He was slowly taking out a squad, down to five men because I’d already gotten one of 'em back before they rode out of our ambush, as they were going up this little goat track up a cliff.  And he was knocking them off, starting at the back because this track, you could not go up it more than single-file, and if he started in the back, he could get rid of a few before the rest realized what he’d done.  He gets to the third, and the other two, they realize that he’s there.  He’s shooting at them from fifty feet up a tree; because of the cliff, they’d gone from being under him to being at the same height.”  

Steve indicated their relative positions with his hands, the left slanting upwards to indicate the HYDRA officers’ climb.  “So Bucky, he gets a good hard look at where they are, shoots one, _jumps out of the tree,_ and _shoots the other one on the way down.”_

Steve took a long draw of his Sprite as cover.  He could still remember the clench of his heart when he’d seen it, the way Monty had made a little sound of shock and loss beside him.  Watching the body falling through the branches, hitting more than one on the way down, then slapping the ground and rolling away with an awful crunching sound.  

Then getting up, brushing itself off.  Walking towards them, rifle slung nonchalantly over its shoulder.  

Steve could still feel the way his heart had started beating again.  

“No one human,” he continued softly, “could have made that shot.  Well, that’s what we thought then.  Now I know otherwise - Hawkeye could have done it, _maybe_ the Widow - but the fact is, they’ve both been training at their craft since childhood.  Bucky’d never even seen a rifle before basic.  He couldn’t have done it.

“Not before Zola, anyway.”  

In the beat of absolutely silence that fell after he’d finished the story, Lee studied him, gaze intent and observant.  He must have been wearing contacts, Steve realized; his eyes were blue today.

“Cool,” Lee said finally, and grabbed a cookie.

Steve shrugged.  “I, personally, never reported Bucky’s increased abilities, mostly because I assumed the Howlies already had.  But maybe they hadn’t, because _they’d_ assumed _I_ would report it.”  He paused, winced.  “It… probably _was_ actually my job.  I didn’t like talking about it, though, because it pretty obviously bothered Bucky a lot.  He was quieter after we met back up, and I would have thought it was the effects of the war, except Dum Dum and Gabe mentioned it, too.  So yeah, it’s possible that no one knew but us.”  

He fidgeted with his cookies.  

“It got stronger, too,” he admitted.  “Right after Azzano, he was mostly still normal.  The tree was two months later, and the arm thing was almost a year.  That’s why we thought - not Bucky, but the rest of the Howlies and I discussed it - we thought it was a defective version of the serum.”

“'The arm thing'?” Nate asked, fascinated.

“Oh - right.  Bucky broke his arm in the middle of Poland.  It was mostly healed by the time we got back to France.”  

“Are you sure it was broken in the first place?” asked Tim, and Steve gave him an incredulous look.

“Well, I could see the end of the bone sticking through the skin, so…”

“Shit!  Jesus!  Don’t _say_ things like that, _ugh_ , I’m gonna puke - !”  Tim surged off the couch and stumbled out the door.

Steve winced.  “Sorry?”

“Don’t worry about it, he’s a big baby,” Daniel waved at him.  “Did… Bucky... ever get anything worse?”

“What, you mean worse than a compound fracture?” Steve asked.  He thought about it.  “Maybe, actually.  There was one mission, right before… before the train…  He basically took on about thirty people alone.  And, you know, he came out covered in blood, particularly from the hip down, and we asked if he’d been hurt.  ‘Through-and-through on my leg,’ he told us, ‘nothin' to worry about.’  So we didn’t, and sure enough, when we were patching everything up, he had this neatly-healing bullet wound going right through his thigh.”  Steve jerked his shoulders in something nothing like a shrug.  “I remember thinking, ‘Jeez, where that’s at, he’s lucky it didn’t hit the artery.’  But maybe it did.  There was certainly enough blood.”

Nate shook his head, marveling.  “Are you sure he even died after the _train?”_ he asked, and Steve felt his shoulders creeping up by his ears.

He forced them back down again.  “I asked Stark,” he said, and realized he was using the Captain Voice.

Heck with it; didn’t matter.

“Stark said that, in snow like that, it was possible to have a relatively gentle landing, even considering the height and the speed the train was going.  But then he’d be stuck in the cold, in the middle of the alps, possibly grievously injured, probably unconscious for at least a while…”  He made himself not flinch from the horrified compassion in their eyes.  “Stark said, best case scenario, he was unconscious after the fall, and then just never woke up.  Because no matter what, the cold was going to get him.”  

After a while, Daniel cleared his throat.  “Nate, maybe we’d better get back to his thoughts on Schmidt and Zola?”

  
  


The afternoon got better when the rest of the actors playing Commandos piled in, kicking Lee out to go get rescued by Isaac.  Steve was pleased to meet Mo, who had a slight Canadian accent and was playing Dernier, and Peter, who had an Australian accent, and would be playing Monty.  “Still no Peggy?” Steve asked lightly.  

“She’s not in any of the factory scenes, so we didn’t make her suffer coming to Jersey,” joked Daniel.  

“She’ll be in the camp scenes, though, as soon as we find a good location for those,” noted Mo.  

“Try not to flirt,” advised Geoff seriously.

“Yeah,” agreed Ken, “It’s only an actress _playing_ your old girlfriend.  Not the real deal.”

“I always try not to flirt,” Steve answered, choosing to ignore the bit about Peggy.  “Because I’m terrible at it.”  

“Hard to believe,” commented Mo.

“I once got tazed while trying to ask a girl to coffee,” Steve informed him.  

“Seriously?!”

“Well, it turned out she was a Ten Rings operative, and that I am terrible at undercover work, but yes, technically, that claim was true.”

  
  


Steve headed out long before they’d finished filming for the day, saying he wanted to get the car back, and he’d rather wash it before the light went.  But as he was driving toward the slightly-less-dreary portion of the sky that marked the setting sun, Steve found himself feeling… almost cheerful.  It was an odd emotion for a day filled with bitter reminiscences, and he found himself studying it, feeling lighter and, simultaneously, _watching_ that lightness, all the way back into the city.

  
  


Steve picked up Italian from down the street, then walked back to the building, pondering the day.  He still felt odd, unbalanced, as if he were wearing a weighted training vest.  Still, maybe he was just hungry; that happened a lot.  

He wasn’t fool enough to leave the food in the common room while he ducked upstairs, so he took it with him while he picked up a notebook and pen, then headed back down to the common room to sit on the couch while he drafted his speech for the Wounded Warrior Project’s Courage awards.  

Writing speeches actually felt good to him.  A lot of the time, he did them off the cuff; almost always in the case of the short ones, because it felt right, and let him relate to the crowd more.  But this was supposed to be seven to eight minutes, and Steve figured he’d better have something prepared.  He was shipping out with the STRIKE team at 0700 the next morning, and he’d be gone for three weeks, so now was the time.

He wrote about being small, and poor, and having no father, and being _so angry…_

> _I used to feel like the only things I had in the whole world were pride and a sense of right and wrong, and those two things got me into trouble more times than I could count._
> 
> _I wasn’t a good person to know, then.  I know I caused my ma no end of grief.  She was always worrying about me anyway, because I was pretty sickly, but the fights made it so much worse.  I know - I_ know - _that she spent time just wishing I could be quiet, and let things roll over me.  She even told me, once:  “Steve, you’ve got to learn to bend like the willow.  If you try to stand like the oak, you’ll shatter.”_
> 
> _But she also told me never to run.  “Once you start running, they’ll never let you stop,” she said, the first time I encountered bullies._
> 
> _And even at my worst, she never asked me to change._
> 
> _She never played the guilt card, telling me I was scaring her and breaking her heart.  Even though I was, every time I came home with a black eye, bruises… a broken arm, once, and we didn’t have money for the doctors that month, so she set it at home._
> 
> _Still, she never said, “Stevie, just give up,” and I think she’d have been heartbroken if I_ had _given up._
> 
> _Bucky was the same way.  He had it even worse than she did, I think.  For one thing, he was there after she died, when I was brittle and angry and all I wanted was for the whole world to hurt the way I did.  I got in more fights in the six months after her death than in the previous six years combined, and I can’t say that more than two thirds of them were properly justified._
> 
> _But every time, Bucky'd find me - I almost never started fights when he was around to talk me down.  And he’d step in, and he’d finish them.  And then he’d look at me, and shake his head, and I_ know _was disappointing him, but he never said it.  Sometimes he’d say, “I wish you could mind your own business,” or something, and to be honest that was usually fair, but he never told me that fighting for what I believed in was wrong._
> 
> _And he never told me not to bother, that I was too scrawny, too weak, too sick to be doing it.  He never even thought it.  He thought I was too small for it to be_ smart, _but he never thought I was too small for it to be_ right.
> 
> _The point is, they, Bucky and Ma, were doing something which was so much braver than going off to war.  Bucky did that, too, of course, and I got a front row seat to how badly it treated him.  But sticking with_ me _, when I was angry and tiny and sick with pride, and also just generally sick?  That took courage every single day.  That took a decision to look at me, at how terrible my life and my life-choices consistently were, and decide, “No, I love that crazy bastard, I’ll stick with him even though it’s awful.”_
> 
> _War is a terrible thing.  It takes people like Bucky - warm, kind, patch-you-up Bucky, who never started fights, but always finished them when I did - and makes them into people like me.  There’s a quote from Shakespeare:_ Now could I drink hot blood , / And do such bitter business as the day / Would quake to look upon. _That’s what war turned people into._
> 
> _The awards tonight are to honor just some of the millions of people - family, friends, lovers, ministers, elders, and communities - who take people like me, people who drink that hot and bitter blood, and help us to turn ourselves into people like Bucky._
> 
> _I can’t think of a group more worthy of recognition._

Steve stopped and read over what he had, slowly, timing it out in his head.  It wasn’t enough to fill the time, and definitely needed more work.  Maybe add in more background about the neighborhood, and growing up skinny?  

Still pondering it, lulled by a warm room and too-rich Italian food, Steve drifted off to sleep.

  
  


He woke up on the couch with a crick in his neck, listening to Jane and Darcy talk about… huh.  Some kind of readings?

“They’re so minor, though, it’s like the background of static on the TV,” Jane was saying.

“So, without the upgrades to the equipment Stark gave us, you might not even have seen them,” Darcy responded, voice… teasing?

Jane’s voice went stiff.  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Darcy snorted.

“I’m sure we’d have picked them up eventually,” Jane insisted snippily.  

“Sure.  Pass me the egg rolls, would you?”

Steve groaned a little to let them know he was awake, and sat up.  

“Hey, Sleeping Beauty!” greeted Darcy.  “Have a nice nap?”

“Sure,” Steve said, voice rough.  “Talking science?”

“Yup!  Jane was just about to admit that my idea to move here to Avengers Tower was a _totally awesome one.”_

Jane narrowed her eyes, and offered Steve an aluminum carton.  “Egg roll?” she offered sweetly.  “Because _Darcy’s_ sure not getting any more.”

Steve took an egg roll.  He offered Darcy the leftover garlic bread, though.

Jane sighed.  “We need a break, anyway.  What are you working on?”

“Speech,” said Steve.  “I’m letting it steep, though,” he added apologetically.

“Cool, cool,” Darcy nodded, and a little silence fell.

Steve broke it.  “So, weird question…” he started.  “Have either of you ever thought it was odd that you were… happy?”

Darcy frowned; Jane said, “Yes,” and Darcy’s head whipped around towards her.  

“When I first fell in love with Thor, and then again, when he came back to us in London.  Both times, I was so in love, and I was just…   _giddy…”_  She looked to Steve to make sure he was understanding, and Steve nodded.  “I’d never felt anything like that.  It wasn’t that I’d never been in love before, because I had, a few times, actually… It’s that no one had ever loved me back the same way.  And that it could be someone like _Thor,_ who is…”  She flapped her hands in front of her in a helpless gesture, and Steve kind of understood, because if Thor looked at him the way Thor looked at Jane, Steve’d probably be doing the same thing.  

“Thor is pretty godly,” Steve acknowledged with a smile.

“Exactly.  So to go from being the skinny little weirdo that no one likes, to being the beloved of someone like _that,_ it was…”

“Surreal?”

“I just kept waiting for the other shoe to drop,” Jane said plaintively.  “I think, sometimes, that I couldn’t do this, couldn’t be with him, if Thor didn’t have to go back to Asgard so often.  I’d be so scared of breaking it, I wouldn’t trust it at all.”

Steve took another egg roll.

“Why do you ask?” said Darcy, looking worried.  “No, chew and swallow first.  Jesus, Steve.”

Obediently, he chewed and swallowed, then said, “I felt something like that today, driving back to the city from the Howling Commandos set.”  He paused, digressed.  “By the way, Darcy, your boyfriend says hi.”

“Oh, hey, cool.”

“We’d been talking about the most awful things, but I felt almost… happy.  It was almost like being back in the war, only without the war.”  He eyed Jane and Darcy sideways.  “I think sometimes I’m a pretty terrible person for it, but I was always happiest during the war.”

“Well, sure,” said Darcy, as if that made total sense.  He raised his eyebrows questioningly at her, and she explained, “That’s where your bros were.  Did you even have bros before the war?  Other than Bucky, I bet you didn’t; you sound like you were one of those angry little goth kids that goes around saying _I’ll show everyone some day!”_

Steve blinked, and looked suspiciously at the notepad he’d been writing in, but no, it was turned to the side of the couch, Darcy couldn’t have read it.

“And then,” she continued, “You went to war, and you had your… platoon?  Squad?  Idunno, whatever you called it, they were _totally_ your bros.  Weren’t they?”

“Assuming I’m understanding what you mean by _bros,”_ Steve answered cautiously.  

“Well, you don’t really have that here, because Tony is crazy and Bruce is scared and Clint is living in Bed-Stuy for some reason, god only knows, and Natasha, who is _amazing_ and who would secretly _love_ to be your bro, but she can’t admit it -”

“You have had _one conversation_ with her, you _can’t_ know that.”

“Dude!  I know things!  Anyway, Natasha’s gone all the time for her stupid job, so she can’t really be your bro, either.  But Isaac and Lee text you, like, _all the time,_ right?”  

They did.  It had been a little baffling at first.

“And they’re not scared of you like all the other Normals, because they’re, like, studying you.  For work.  Kinda like how Janey’s not scared of the wormholes?”

That was… not the most flattering analogy.

“And you saw them today, and hung out, right?”

“Lee, yes.  Isaac I passed in the hallway.”  Steve frowned.  “He was wearing my pants.  It was weird.”

“And thank you for that mental image.”  She grinned at him.  “Soooo, you hung out with your bro today.  The one who looks like your _other_ bro.”  She shrugged.  “No wonder you were happy.”

Steve stared at her, then turned to Jane.  “How does she make these things sound obvious?” he demanded.  

Jane shrugged.  “It’s a gift,” she said.

Darcy cackled and picked up her drink.  “You know what I think?” she asked.

“No, but after that, I’m definitely going to listen when you tell me.”

She grinned around her straw.  “I think you could totally make the Avengers your bros; you just have to reel them in.”  She set down the drink and made a fairly accurate spooling gesture.

Steve frowned.  “You fish?” he asked, surprised, and she rolled her eyes.  

“I’m from West Virginia,” she informed him.  “I do it all.”

Steve passed her an egg roll.  

“Okay, then,” he asked when she’d eaten it with a gleeful noise.  “So you tell me:  How do I fish for Avengers?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few notes on this one.  
> 1) Steve is not thinking very clearly about Bucky; never has, never will. In the scene with Daniel and Tim, he has literally JUST told everybody that Stark maybe didn't know Bucky had the serum, but because he's used to believing Stark DID know (because he assumed it got into the reports), he still trusts Stark's assessment that Bucky has to have died, even though that's based on false information.  
> He also hasn't realized that if Bucky had the serum, Stark was automatically wrong about the cold killing him, because it clearly failed to kill Steve.  
> 2a) Steve, per this fic, has been seriously depressed for the last year, probably since Bucky's death, but definitely since waking up after EVERYONE'S death. This chapter is where he starts to figure that out.  
> 2b) The reason Steve has not made any real friends at SHIELD or elsewhere since his defrosting is a combination of a) most people are scared of him, including folks at SHIELD; b) there aren't a lot of people he's around very often; and c) the ones he DOES spend time around, like Tony, are Very Bad at Relationships. Steve's pretty easy to be friends with, as Lee and my Small Horde of OC's are finding out, but you have to push at first, and no one else was pushing.  
> 3) The WWP Courage awards are a real thing, but they are held in May. Pretend, for the sake of my fic, that they are held in September, instead. Also, unless I missed something, WWP does meet Steve's guidelines for speaking events.  
> 4) It will never come up in this fic, at all, but the readings Darcy and Jane are talking about here that they couldn't detect without StarkTech are coming through when Heimdall's watching them.
> 
> Sketching out where we are: There are currently five chapters written; the first three are all over 5k words, but the next two are both smaller: 3.5 and 4.1, respectively. They are also both Isaac chapters. Then the 6th chapter, which is not written yet, we will most likely get some plot (I thought it would happen in the Isaac 2.0, but nope! This is why I don't make promises until shit be written.) Then the 7th chapter should wrap things up in a nice bow for the next fic, which I have not written at all, but which will most likely be road-trip based. (And maybe some fucking? Do we want that? Steve/Lee, tell me in the comments.) 
> 
> And then! The after credits scene! I am so excited for that, you have no idea. The idea of that after credits scene is what is keeping me going in a fic that has ALREADY passed my projected length limit, and hasn't even hit the ACTION yet.


	4. Isaac

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Steve Rogers goes fishing for Avengers (and catches a surprising number).

  
The first invitation involved pizza.  Specifically, about $250 worth of pizza, garlic bread, salad, and old-fashioned sodas from the really good place in Brooklyn that a) didn’t deliver and b) was two blocks from his apartment.  

> **_Steve Rogers:_ **_If you pick up the pizza, I’ll pay you back._  
>  **_Steve Rogers:_ ** _I’d do it, but I might be late.  
>  _**_Steve Rogers:_ ** _I’m coming in from DC, so._
> 
> **_Isaac:_ ** _yeah, sure, I’ll pick up the pizza.  
>  **I**_ ** _saac:_ **_Where am I taking it to?_
> 
> **_Steve Rogers:_ **_Avengers Tower, 68th floor._  
>  **S** ** _teve Rogers:_ ** _JARVIS will let you in._  
>  **_Steve Rogers:_ ** _He’s Tony’s Artificial Intelligence / Butler / Nanny  
>  _**_Steve Rogers:  (_ ** _My life is pretty weird sometimes.)_
> 
> **_Isaac:_ ** _Please tell me you are not going to strand me with the Avengers, the robot butler, and the pizza.  
>  _**_Isaac:_ **_That would not be ok_
> 
> **_Steve Rogers:_ ** _Darcy will be there._  
>  **_Steve Rogers:_ ** _And Lee said he’d bring Jodie?  
>  _**_Steve Rogers:_ ** _Besides, you already know Clint._
> 
> **_Isaac:_ ** _Yeah, ok, Clint is pretty cool_  
>  **_Isaac:_ **_Kind of zaney?_  
>  **_Isaac:_ ** _But cool  
>  _**_Isaac:_ ** _Wait, he’s an Avenger?_
> 
> **_Steve Rogers:_ ** _Hawkeye, the archer?_  
>  **_Steve Rogers:_ ** _Thor will be there, we think._  
>  **_Steve Rogers:_ ** _Jane says she’s getting better at predicting it.  
>  _**_Steve Rogers:_ ** _That may be wishful thinking on her part, though._
> 
> ******_Isaac:_ ** _THOR.  
>  _**_Isaac:_ ** _What is my life_
> 
> **_Steve Rogers:_ ** _Why did you think I was getting so much pizza?_

So, at 1900 on Thursday, Isaac found himself riding up the elevator of Avengers Tower with nearly 40 pounds of New York style Italian food.  

There was, in fact, a robot butler.  Steve was right; this life was weird.

The door opened into what was definitely a party; there was a lot of beer, but no liquor, and a fair spread of baked goods which Jane was guarding with fierce glares.  Next to her, trying to cajole her into giving him either kisses or brownies - it could have gone either way, really - was a tall blond man who pretty much had to be the God of Thunder.

Especially when he looked up and bellowed, “CAPTAIN!”  Then blinked.  “Nay, you are not; my apologies for mistaking you.”

“No worries,” Isaac said, over the incredibly loud pounding of his heart.  

“Isaac!” shouted Darcy, turning around with a batch of…

_Oh, damn.  Chocolate/chocolate-chip._

Maybe Lee would share?  Poly?  Maybe?

“Thor, this is Isaac.  You know television shows?  Well, they’re making one about Steve.”

Thor’s face brightened, his smile clearing.  “Ah!  And you portray the good captain in this production?”

“I do,” Isaac answered.  “She’s wrong, though.  It’s not about Steve, it’s about the men he led.  The Howling Commandos.”  And then he braced himself, because this was the thing that no one had been getting about the show; it wasn’t a hero’s tale, because while the Captain America hero's tale was a great story, it had been _done to fucking death_.  THC was an ensemble production, and if _anyone_ was the lead, it wasn’t Isaac; it was Lee.

Apparently, though, no one had told Thor that Captain America was supposed to be the be-all and end-all of every work that ever mentioned him, because he responded simply, “I have been here only briefly, and so have had no time to listen to tales of these brave men.  Please, regale me as we set out the feast.”

“Oh,” said Isaac, trying to think how to explain that he was _not a talker, really._

Darcy stepped in with a sympathetic smile.  “Better idea, Big Guy,” she said.  “Let’s wait until Steve gets here, and then we can ask him directly.”  She shot Isaac a look, cocking an eyebrow, and he realized that this way, he and Lee (assuming Lee showed up) could get more intel for the show, too.  “In the meantime, why don’t you tell us some of the exploits of the Lady Sif and the Warriors Three?”

Lee _did_ show up, coming in halfway through the story of how Thor, Lady Sif, and the Warriors Three had met Jane, Darcy, and Dr. Selvig, whom they would apparently not be meeting because he was "not so great with new people these days".  Jodie came in with Lee, and immediately went in for hugs on Darcy, which was _amazing_ to watch: Isaac definitely got the feeling that if Lee hadn’t been there, Darcy and Jodie would have been greeting with more than hugs.  

It was pretty incredible.

Plus, Jodie hugged Isaac next, which was even better.  

Clint slunk in after that, showing up looking distinctly worse for wear, but reluctant to talk about it.  Thor tried to press him for details, but Clint responded by shutting down, and Lee jumped in and offered him pizza instead.  Clint accepted the pizza, helped himself to the beer and brownies, and sat down on the couch still looking fairly moody.

Then, _Tony fucking Stark_ wandered in - okay, it was his tower, but _holy shit -_ took seven slices (two cheese, one meat-lovers, one supreme, three vegetarian), a small tower of baked goods, and three beers, and wandered out again.  All without talking to, or making eye contact with, anyone.

There was a small, still pool of silence in his wake.

“Was he high?” wondered Jodie.

Darcy shook her head, eyes narrowed.  “Working on something,” she said, voice suspicious.  “He will be done by midnight tonight, or I’m getting _Thor_ to put him to bed.”

Then Isaac got a text from Steve.

>   ** _Steve Rogers:_ ** _No reason, but did Clint show up yet?_

Isaac looked across the room, where Clint was brooding on his corner of the couch.

He shrugged; not his business. 

> **_Isaac:_ ** _Yeah, but he’s being weird.  Quiet_
> 
> **_Steve Rogers:_ ** _But he stayed?  He’s still there?_
> 
> **_Isaac:_ ** _So far_
> 
> **_Steve Rogers:_ ** _Thanks.  
>  _**_Steve Rogers:_ ** _We’ll be there soon._

_We?_ Isaac wondered.  He served himself a couple pieces of pepperoni and kind of a lot of the house salad (which was amazing), as well as two pieces of garlic bread, then sat on the couch at the opposite end from the Thunderstorm Formerly Known As Clint.   _Am I imagining the guy who did tequila shots off of Jodie's clavicle a month ago?  The one who honest-to-God giggled when he looked at Steve sitting next to me?  What the hell?_

Darcy and Lee settled together on the other couch, and Thor _(Thor!_ squeaked a not-very-dignified voice in Isaac's head) sat on the floor, with Jane on his lap, which was ridiculously cute because Jane was _tiny._   Jodie hopped around, getting everybody drinks and napkins and, in Thor’s case, more pizza already, then settled cross-legged on the ground at Isaac’s feet, which Isaac couldn’t help by notice left an empty space between Clint and the rest of the group.   

Isaac frowned, but before he’d decided what to do about it, Steve Rogers walked in _with the fucking Black Widow._

“Holy shit!” squeaked Lee, and Isaac would absolutely have made fun of him for that, except that mentally, he was doing the exact same thing.

She looked kind of… battered.  A little bruised, although not dirty - she and Steve had both pretty obviously had recent showers - but her clothes were rumpled, as if they had just been pulled out of a duffle bag, and when she walked, Isaac could see a bulge, like from a bandage, under her jeans.  Lateral thigh, he noted; probably a bullet graze.  Maybe a knife.

She also looked kind of pissed off, but she paused when she saw Clint on the couch, and suddenly Isaac knew why Steve had asked if Clint was staying.

“I’ll make you up a plate,” Steve told her.  (Captain Voice.)  “Have a seat.”

She nodded, wordless, and curled up on the couch next to Clint, who - huh.  Raised his arm up and put it around her.  Without looking.

Steve did make up a plate for her, then grabbed his own (as well as another bottle of beer for Jodie) and sat on the couch next to Lee.  He sat, leaned his head back, and just blew out like an exhausted horse.  

No one said anything.

Isaac’s eyes widened.  No one was saying anything, and he was _two feet away from the Black Widow._ Who was looking _cuddly._

 _This is not okay!_ screamed that little voice in his brain.

“Sooo,” Isaac said, looking between Clint, the Widow, and Steve.  “Long day?”

Clint and the Widow both gave him (comically identical, actually) flat, incredulous looks, causing Isaac to edge back further into his corner of the couch, but Steve blew out a laugh and gave him a real smile, so it was worth it.

“Very,” agreed Steve.  “Can’t talk about the mission in any detail, but it definitely went sideways.”

Clint frowned.  “How sideways?” he asked, voice suspicious.

“We should have been done in a week,” answered the Widow.  

Clint frowned _more._ “You were gone almost a month.”

“You noticed.”

“And it turned out we’d been made after a week and half,” Steve added.  

“Don’t tell me -” Clint started, but Steve waved him off.

“No, they weren’t dumb enough to put me undercover again.  We had a leak on the STRIKE team.”

“Shit!”

“He’s dead now,” cut in the Widow, and that certainly cast a pall over the room.

That was moment when Isaac discovered that he really, truly, absolutely _loved_ Thor, God of Thunder.  Because Thor leaped on that silence like he was Captain America and it was a grenade, explaining what Isaac had said about the show, and requesting more stories from Steve.  Lee suggested that they were all in the mood for something comedic, if he had it, and that was how Steve ended up telling them about the time Monty and Dum Dum managed to steal the plans for the HYDRA facility they were going to attack by winning them in a poker tournament with some particularly incompetent SS officers.  

After that, Steve, who was usually a better friend than this and had had a long three weeks, and who could therefore be forgiven, asked Isaac to talk some about his service in the Coast Guard.  “You saw action?” he prompted.

“Yeah, some,” Isaac confirmed reluctantly.  “Nothing like you did, of course.”

“Well, it’s been seventy years; I would hope not.”

Isaac nodded.  “Mostly drug stuff,” he said, apologetically.  Steve and Thor looked like they might ask more questions, but Clint and the Widow both _got it,_ how the drug smugglers sometimes used kids, told the kids lies about what would happen if they were caught, how _awful_ it was to have a twelve-year-old shooting at you.  

So Clint broke in, “I got a dog.”

Jodie was the first one to speak after the abrupt subject change.  “What kinda dog?” she asked gamely.

Clint barked out a laugh.  “Damned if I know.  Mutt, most likely.  Maybe some golden?  Some lab?”  He shrugged.  “He’s got one eye.  I’m calling him Lucky.”

“I always wanted a dog,” mentioned Lee.  “But the big ones you can’t keep in an apartment, and the little ones are just unmanly.”  

“Awww,” said Clint.  “You could keep a big one in my apartment.”

“That’s… good for you?”

“No, I mean, I’ve got a whole building.  You could rent one, if you ever wanted a dog more than, y’know… your dignity.”

Lee blinked.  “I’ll think about it,” he said, sounding… surprised?  

Well.  Clint seemed like a private guy.  Maybe the offer to live in his building _was_ kind of surprising.  

“Do you have a good vet?” asked Jane, looking half-ready to fall asleep on Thor’s _(Thor’s!)_ broad chest.  

“Nah, not yet.”

“Bruce can probably do it,” she yawned.  

“I dunno, Jane,” Steve said, and Isaac took a minute to appreciate how comfortable he looked, shoulders down, head back, voice full-Brooklyn.  “He always says he’s not that kinda doctor.”

“You should ask him anyway,” she insisted.  “He’d like to be asked, I think.”

Clint looked at her, apparently not expecting that “Bruce” _(who?)_ would care one way or another.  “Okay,” he agreed.  “I’ll ask.”

“If he won’t do it,” Isaac offered, “I can give you the name of the guy I take my cat to.”

The Widow looked over at him, right eyebrow raised half an inch.  “You have a cat?” she asked.

Nervously, Isaac swallowed, nodded.  “Two,” he croaked.  "Uh.  Ma'am."

“Pictures,” she demanded, and Isaac got out his phone, pulling up the gallery featuring pictures of Habanero, who was an orange male, neutered, and Ghost Kitty, who was an all-white female, spayed.  He passed his phone over, and she flipped through the images, almost expressionless, then looked up at him with the barest ghost of a smile on her face.  She nudged Clint with her elbow, and he looked, snickered.  

“Okay, that is adorable,” Clint said, taking the phone and tossing it to Darcy, who immediately said, “Awww!” and started flipping through the gallery.  

Thor asked, “Do you not have any images of your hound, Lucky?”  

As it turned out, Clint _absolutely_ had images of his hound, Lucky.

The dog had a really great smile.

  
  


By 8:30, though, the conversation had dried up, adorable animals having only carried them so far, and Clint and the Widow were looking ready to make a break for it.  

Steve sighed.  “I don’t want to go to sleep,” he blurted.  “I want to stay a while longer.”  

Thor looked over from above the sleeping Jane.  “Friend Isaac, you are an actor, are you not?  Have you not had other roles besides that of the good Captain?”  

Isaac smiled.  “Not me,” he admitted.  “I actually was still taking classes when I was cast in THC.”  Thor looked a little disappointed, though, so Isaac added, “Lee’s had a few roles, though.”

“Oh, no,” muttered Lee.  

Darcy looked suddenly _completely awake._ “Oh, _yes,”_ she breathed.  “Thor.  Captain.  Have either one of you ever seen -”  She dropped her voice dramatically. _“Darkest Night?”_

“NAY!”

Jane started awake.  “Gah!  What’s going on?”

Steve looked blank.  “I… don’t know what that is,” he said uncertainly.

“Yesss!” hissed Clint, and they all looked at him.  He ducked his head.  “I kinda loved that show,” he admitted.

Lee started laughing.  “You all know that this is going to be terrible, right?” he asked.  “I mean, I was _in it,_ and I think it’s terrible.”

“Don’t care, watching it anyway,” Jodie chanted, and Darcy started to cue up the television, which - Holy shit! - dropped down from the ceiling.

“Okay,” Lee said, unfolding his long legs and stretching his arms over his head.  “Ground rules.  

“There are three episodes I don’t watch:  The haunted house episode in the first season, the demonic sex priestess episode in the second season, and the shadowmage episode in the fourth season.  Those episodes were very difficult to shoot, and I don't like to be reminded of them.

“Two, if you decide you ship _anything,_ and I do mean _anything, Jodie,_ that especially includes you…  I don’t want to hear about it.  Ever.”  He looked around the group to make sure they understood.

“What is ‘shipping’ in this context?” asked Thor.

Isaac jumped to his feet.  “Okay!  I’m going out for a cigarette, somebody come with me so I don’t get lost!”  

It was a good strategy, right up until the Widow volunteered to be his guide.  

To be fair, she didn’t try to kill him _at all_ as she showed him to the balcony hanging in the middle of the A emblazoned on the side of the building.  And she had just done what was, he was sure, her version of _cooing_ over pictures of his cats.  (Only fair.  His cats were awesome.)  

Apparently, no one had told his _hands_ that the Black Widow liked his cats, because they were shaking as he lit up his cigarette.

The first deep breath of nicotine felt like a slim hope for survival.  

“Was it your idea?” she asked, standing three feet beside and behind him.

Isaac concentrated hard on not falling off the balcony.

A strong hand grabbed him by the neck of his shirt and hauled him back.  

“Thanks,” he gasped.

She looked unimpressed.  Or maybe that was what she looked like instead of laughing.

Whatever, not dead, taking the win.

“Was what my idea?” he asked, emboldened by her evident reluctance to let him fall to his death.

“Family movie night,” she said, looking faintly disparaging.

“Oh, that.  No,” he shook his head.  “Steve texted me and told me to pick up pizza, the robot butler would let me in.  That’s all I know.”

“Hmm.”  

She didn’t say anything else as he finished his cigarette.  Eventually, he stubbed it out, grinding the butt with his shoe, then, thinking better of it, picked it up and put it in his pocket until they passed a trash can.  She turned to lead him inside, then paused.  

Met his eyes.

“Call me Natasha,” she ordered, the corner of her mouth quirking up.  “Steve doesn’t like it when people call me Widow.”

Deep breath in, deep breath out.  “Okay,” Isaac said, and followed her inside.

  
  


“So, um.   _Natasha_.  Have you ever seen this show before?”  There, that was a definite quirk of smile on the far side of her face.  

And it was almost worth it for the totally _what the fuck?_ look Lee was giving him, too.

“No,” she said.  

“Vampire.  Detective.” Clint informed her, apparently believing this to be all the relevant information needed.  

To be fair, it pretty much was.

“The second season is the best,” Darcy informed them.  

“I say the third, but at any rate not the first or the fifth,” Jodie put in.  “The first, they were still hitting their stride, and the fifth you could just tell Mason’s heart wasn’t in it.”

“His _heart?”_ asked Lee, who then closed his eyes and shook his head.  “Never mind.  Alright, first and fifth were worst.”

“Well, what’s your favorite season?”

“Probably the fourth,” Lee admitted, “But that’s mostly because my character finally got the growth and development he deserved.”  And that was definitely an argument Lee had made before.

“Dude.  You didn’t think that whole, ‘look, I’m a warlock now!’ thing was trite?”

“It was practically copy and pasted from Willow in _Buffy: the Vampire Slayer,”_ Jodie pointed out.

Lee started laughing, great, gasping, hollow laughs.  They all stared at him, howling on the couch, befuddled and unsure what to do.  Darcy looked _what the fuck?_ at Isaac; Isaac tried to convey, _I have no clue, seriously, this man is insane at the best of times_ with his eyes.  Eventually, Lee got control of himself well enough to wheeze, “Well, I don’t know, guys.  It seemed realistic to me!”

The girls rolled their eyes, and Darcy sat up away from him, pulling Jodie into her lap.  

  
  


Thor was looking at the screen very, very seriously.  “Jane,” he said, voice rousing her from sleep.

“Huh-Thor?”

“Jane.  You have told me of this celebration of..” He hesitated, getting the word right.  “...Halloween?”

Jane’s eyes widened as she looked between Thor and the screen, where Raymond Dark snarled, his long, white canines and his platinum blond hair catching the light, the only points of brightness in a dark and grim scene.

“Oh,” she said, now _entirely_ awake.  “Yes, yes I have.”

  
  


“No, guys, skip this episode.”

“This one wasn’t on your list.”

“Yeah, but that’s because it’s not on _my_ list.”  

“What troubles you, friend Lee?”

“Wait… This is because the girls are in the bathroom, isn’t it?  Wait until they come back, we can ask again.”

Five minutes later, Darcy, Jodie, and Natasha had returned from the restroom, and Lee immediately appealed the question to their judgement.  

“Oh, hey, is this the homoerotic flashback episode?  Yeah, _let’s skip this one.”_

_“Thank you.”_

Natasha quirked an eyebrow at Darcy.  “Not something I would normally have expected you to say,” she observed.  

Darcy jerked her head sharply to her left, and now Natasha quirked _both_ eyebrows.

Isaac pulled up the episode summary on his phone, passing it over so that Natasha could see that this particular flashback was set during WWII.  

“Ah,”

“We should probably skip episode fifteen, too,” Lee sighed.

  
  


“What are you all doing here?  Is there a party?”  Tony Stark stood in the doorway, holding dishes and looking nonplussed.  On the screen, there was a still frame of Raymond Dark’s face, the last episode they’d watched having ended to a sea of unconscious faces.  Those who had been awake had elected not to play another, instead speaking in low voices in the dark.  

“...Yes?” answered Isaac.

“Well why wasn’t I invited?”

“You were,” Steve pointed out, evidently having come awake when Stark spoke.  “You had ‘very important science to do’.”

“Oh.”  Stark looked around the room, where nine people took up six butts-worth of couch and spilled over onto laps and floor.  “I’ll buy some more cushions.”

Darcy woke Jodie, then booted her off her lap and stood.  “Alright, kids, time for bed.  When Tony’s being the reasonable one, it is totally naptime.  Lee?”  An authoritative eyebrow summoned him to her side.  “Let’s go.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Lee said mildly.  

“Isaac, Jodie, I’m pretty sure my suite has three bedrooms; you’re each welcome to use one,” Steve offered.  

“Thank you,” Isaac said gratefully.  “I didn't have much of anything to drink, but for some reason, I’m just so damn -”  An enormous yawn cut him off in the middle of his sentence, and he rocked his head from side to side afterwards before finishing, “- Tired.”

“I see,” said Steve, not laughing because he was a gentleman.  Around them, people were scattering into the hallway, and he could hear the Black Widow - _Natasha,_ he reminded himself, and did a little mental happy dance at _calling the Black Widow by name_ \- urging Tony to “send Bruce to bed too, one of you has to be awake in the morning.”

Jodie yawned, jaw cracking, and wrapped her arms around Isaac.  “Sleepy,” she announced.  

“I know,” answered Isaac.  “Here.”   He bent down, picked Jodie up with an arm under her knees and another behind her shoulders, and carried her after Steve.  

Jodie giggled.  “Captain America!” she sing-songed, and Isaac exchanged a totally helpless look with the _actual Captain America_ walking right next to them.  

“No, Jodie,” Isaac said finally.  “I’m just an actor, remember?  Just a guy.”

“Doesn’t matter,” she mumbled.  “Still a hero.”  

Then she buried her head in his neck as Isaac’s heart melted and dripped warm goo all over his insides.

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I stopped this chapter 400 words before I meant to, plotwise, because it was TOO FUCKING CUTE to keep going.  
> For the same reason, I'd been thinking about combining this with the next chapter, or doing the next from Lee's POV instead, neither of which happened because Steve and Isaac together decided to RIP MY FUCKING HEART OUT. Seriously. This chapter is schmoop. Next chapter? It is SOBS. I just finished writing chapter five when sticking this on AO3 as a draft, so I am writing this note fully cognizant having only tiny shreds of heart left.
> 
> Isaac's cats are both named after the Cat I Never Got. When my husband and I were dating, we agreed that we would get a companion for my current cat, Jeffrey, and that the name Jalepeno was perfect for an orange male. But when we got married, it never happened, and now that Stupid Jerkface has left me, it never will. So Isaac gets them, instead.


	5. Isaac (Again)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is more successful fishing for Avengers, Steve Rogers needs _so many_ hugs, and a question is answered definitively.

 

The second invitation came three weeks later, and involved no pizza whatsoever.  Instead, they all piled into the common room of Avengers Tower for another six episodes of _Darkest Night_ and about fifty pounds of Thai.  Steve got an entire dish of pad thai to himself, as well as three spring rolls and a bowl of coconut rice topped with some of the green curry.  It was _insane._

Isaac at half a package of coconut rice, the rest of the green curry, and two spring rolls, and felt positively modest.

Stark and the mysterious “Bruce” showed up this time, possibly because Stark had figured out that he’d missed a party.  Isaac discovered that he liked Bruce a lot: the guy was quiet, with a self-deprecating sense of humor, and a tendency to puncture Stark’s ego with acidic comments at opportune times.  When Isaac went to go smoke, Bruce went with him, and Isaac found out that the two of them had grown up less than an hour from each other.

“You’re kidding; I’m from Richmond.”

“Indiana?”

“Yeah, my parents worked at the college.”

“Huh."  Bruce leaned on the railing beside him, looking out at the city. "I guess it’s a silly question why  you’re in New York, since you’re an actor…”

“Eh, kind of?  I was never going back, though.  For one thing, Richmond is kind of dying as a town since the factory closed down, but also…”  Isaac tapped his fingers on the banister and tried to think how to say it, how to express how much it bothered him when people were small and closed-minded, fencing in others because they were afraid of being fenced themselves.  

And no, not everyone was like that.  But there was more of that there than here.  

“I like it better in the city,” Isaac eventually decided on, and Banner nodded without comment.  

When they got back in, Lee was leaning back on his cushion and saying, “So, Mr. Stark -”

“Tony.”

“- Tony.  What would you say to being asked to talk about your father with the guy playing him on our show?”

“Evan,” Isaac specified, settling in at Natasha’s feet just to see if it would freak Lee out.  (It did.)  

Stark _(Tony,_ Isaac reminded himself, but really, Isaac had fired a rocket launcher this man had personally designed, there was no way he was going to be able to call him Tony) systematically picked all the vegetables out of his noodles, then dumped the noodles on Bruce’s plate.  “It’s probably a bad idea,” he said when he was done.  “I’ve talked to Steve about my father.  Apparently, we didn’t know the same guy.”

They looked at Steve, who was unhappily poking at his pad thai with chopsticks.  

Jodie got Steve a fork.  

Isaac changed the subject.  

 

 

The third invitation was not so much an invitation as a text message reading, “Just checking, you are coming tonight, right?”  Food was Morrocan, much to Isaac’s delight, and showed up in the arms of Clint, who was accompanied by a tiny, terrifying Asian-American woman named Kate, who probably wasn’t his daughter, and the highlight of the night was when Darcy and Lee realized that they were scheduled to break up the next day.

“Wait.  You _scheduled_ your breakup?” asked Stark _(Tony),_ who seemed torn between “appalled” and “evilly delighted.”  

“Yeah, dude.  Keeps it from getting too serious,” Darcy said, wriggling her feet where they were tucked under Thor’s thigh.  She was lying on Lee’s lap, giggling as he ate off a plate balanced on her stomach.  

“Would that be a bad thing?” asked Jane, looking confused, and Darcy explained what Isaac had already known, which was that Lee was coming off of a bad breakup of a serious relationship and that he would not be ready to commit again for approximately ten years.

“Be fair,” said Lee.  “It might only be seven.”

“So why October 23rd?”

“Two reasons,” she said.  “Number one, Lee was going to be busy on Halloween?”  She raised her head to check with him, and he nodded, then hesitated.

“Well, actually,” he admitted, “that’s the anniversary of the last breakup.  The bad one.”

“Awk-ward,” said Kate, then stuffed lamb stew in her mouth.

“And _two,"_ Darcy continued, riding right over them, “ _More_ importantly:   _Mole Day.”_

“Six point oh two two!” said Jane happily, and the rest of them kept eating as if that made sense.  

 

 

The fourth invitation was not an invitation; it was Steve sticking his head into the Craft Services room to notify Isaac that he had to go out with the STRIKE team, so he and Natasha would be gone that night.  “I got Tony to promise to keep the party going, though.  It should be home made burgers and milkshakes tonight, and they said they were gonna watch the rest of season one.  He specifically told me to ‘pass it along that my minions are still welcome’.”  

Steve’s eyes gave a little roll, because Tony Stark was still a jerk, but Isaac could hear too much Brooklyn in Steve’s voice to mind too much.

Unfortunately, shooting went late, ending at 7:20, and Isaac stopped Lee on his way out to tell him that he would be going home, instead.  

Lee nodded.  “I’ll pass it on,” he said, and put his helmet on before starting the bike.  

  
  


After that, there were no more invitations.  Instead, there was assumption.  Isaac was pretty happy about it.

  
  


Of course, in all of this, Steve was still coming by the set.  He’d meet with the guys (plus Julie, who played Carter and had the most fabulous stage name Isaac’d ever heard:  Jupiter Sue Lee, Jesus Christ it was almost _art_ how terrible that name was), listen to Geoff and Ken’s account of their terrible prank war with Daniel and Tim (Daniel and Tim were winning), and talk about the mischief the “Howlies” got into, interspersed with offhand accounts of gut-numbing bravery told in _exactly the same tone._

The nice thing about it being an ensemble production was that there was a lot of time that Lee and Isaac got to hang out together off-set, while the rest of the Commandos plotted against their leadership team.  

(Their leadership team consisted of Isaac, of course, but usually also Lee because a) Barnes had been the 2IC and b) he was Isaac’s _best friend,_ so of course he was going to spill if something was up.)

(Isaac was starting to feel like he had a solid basis of comprehension for how the original Commandos had worked.)

Frequently, Isaac and Lee spent downtime in 116a, which Jodie, in her wisdom, had talked someone into leaving alone, and stocked with cushions.  And paper towels.  And a low wall of twelve-packs of various Coke products.  

And an ashtray.  Thank you, Jodie.  

Eventually, people started calling this the “actor’s lounge”, which Isaac would have protested except it really _was_ kind of an actor's lounge.  In addition to Isaac and Lee, Daniel and Tim came by on the few days that they had some scenes, but not a lot; typically, they had a few, all shot the same day, and were off the rest of the time.  Joe and Evan had a lot of scenes with Julie, but if Julie was on set (usually with Isaac) and Joe and Evan weren’t, they were in the lounge.  

There were also a few non-actors who would come hang out, particularly Mohammed, who did special effects, and liked to bring his laptop in and listen quietly in the corner for hours at a time.  He had an office, he just apparently liked the furniture-less lounge _better._

Terri, who coordinated their stunts, would pop in in a whirl of energy, talk to everyone, check over their plans for future stunts, and whirl out again.  The only time Isaac ever saw her linger was the day Steve was in there talking about one of the many impossible things he and Bucky had pulled off together - in this case, one even before the war, when he and Bucky managed to get half a dozen thugs taken into police custody without getting made themselves, in a ridiculous scheme involving daring-do (by Bucky), cross-dressing (by Steve), and juvenile, but well-timed, insults (by both of them).  

“You know, the funny thing is,” Lee explained as Terri made a frustrated sound, clapped a hand to her headset, saying, _“Now?  It was just getting good!”_ and left the room, “This is not the first time Steve has told us he wore a dress.  How many times have you dressed in drag, anyway, Steve?”

Steve’s eyes gleamed with mischief.  “Oh, I used to do it all the time.  I was small and kinda pretty, so I could pull it off real well.  Now it’s a lot less believable, of course.”

Jodie, who had snuck in to eat her lunch in peace, was staring; Tim, on break while Daniel terrorized his minions for him, looked like Christmas had come early.  

Isaac, though, recognized Steve’s bullshitting face, and okay, Lee was right, this was not the first time he’d heard this, but _Steve in drag_ _before Project: Rebirth_ and _Steve in drag_ _after Project: Rebirth_ were two very different mental images.  “Pics or it didn’t happen,” he said.

“What?”

“Pics,” Isaac clarified, “as in photographic evidence.   _Or it didn’t happen,_ meaning, or else I won’t believe you.”  He gave Steve an eyebrow.  “It’s a common expression.”

He didn’t really think Steve would do it, of course.  

He didn’t even believe it when Steve got out his phone.  

Lee was grinning.  Jodie was _beaming._

“Not all of these are me, of course,” Steve said.  

“I will be astonished if any of them are you,” Lee assured him.

Steve smirked; Isaac’s jaw dropped.   _Now_ he was starting to believe it.

Steve turned the phone around.  

First picture:  Steve before Project: Rebirth, in what looked like a documentary photo from the project itself.  

Second picture:  a old-timey photograph of a party, men and women swinging around in what looked like the pattern of a Charleston, a bunch of - Isaac thought the period-appropriate word would probably be _gents -_ at one end of the bar, a knot of dames at the other end, all clustered around -

_“Holy shit!”_

“Bucky’s sister Becky’s friends all had a bet that I was prettier’n they were, and they pooled their money for a bottle of good Irish whiskey if I went through with it.  They brought dresses, shoes, wig, padding for the -” Steve made a gesture at his chest. “- And a lot of makeup, but not as much makeup as you would think.  There were a lot of young men that night disappointed in my inability to dance, and I gave the whiskey to Bucky for his birthday the next month.”

He looked fondly at the phone.  “The crazy part was, Bucky was even there that night; I was terrified he was going to recognize me, but he didn’t.  Even asked me to dance, but I didn’t say anything, and one of the others explained that I _couldn’t_ , and that was that.”

“What,” whispered Jodie.  “What even.  I can’t.”

“This is the best day of my _life,”_ whispered Tim fervently.

Steve swiped right.  The entire group made noise, although Jodie won for “most enthusiastic” with a whoop.

Lee’s smile was slow, spreading across his face like maple syrup.  “Steve,” he said, sounding delighted, “That is a very pretty dress.”

Steve beamed.   _“Thank you,”_ he said.  He regarded the picture critically.  “Pepper said it was great color on me.”

Tim gasped.  “Pepper Potts?   _Pepper Potts_ got to see this bastion of delicacy which is you in seafoam-green lace?  She’s right, it’s _fantastic_ , you _sexy beast.”_

Jodie’s face was broken; she was apparently unable to stop smiling.  “I like the wig,” she got out.  

Isaac nodded, trying desperately to think of something supportive to say.  “Red,” he managed.  

Steve looked at him seriously.  “Well,” he said, and it was _Captain Voice,_ Isaac was going to _die._ “I’m naturally fair-complected, and my own hair wasn’t going to be long enough, anyway.”

Isaac nodded like a bobble-head doll:  completely without volition.  “It’s very short,” he agreed.

“I like the curls on you, though,” Jodie said earnestly.  “You looked _so good,_ Steve!”

Steve smiled softly down at the picture.  “It was for another bet,” he admitted.  “Tony’d made one with a friend of his, he talked me into going with him to fulfill it.  Promised me my share of the winnings, which in this case was all the clothes involved and two bottles of scotch, but I’d have done it just to make him smile.  It wasn’t that long after the Battle of Manhattan, and Tony was having a pretty hard time just then.”  

He looked up, beaming at them all.  With his _Captain Face._

_What._

“But ever since that first time with Becky,” he continued in a voice more often used for bond sales, “I’ve known two things:  one, I’m not afraid of looking like a woman.  It’s just _clothes_.  And two, it makes other people happy to dress me up.  Pepper,” he nodded at the phone, “could not stop smiling that day.  Just like Becky and all the other girls, back in 1938.”

Isaac’s throat closed up.  “Steve,” he said, completely blown away with the generosity of _this man,_ who _couldn’t_ have had that much pride to spare back then, but did this anyway.  To make people happy.    _“Steve._  You’re a _good friend.”_  And then, lacking any other words, he held out his hand.

The look on Steve’s face as he shook it was… perfect.

Then Tim swiped right again and found the picture of Tony Stark in red satin, and shrieked.

  
  


Eventually, Tim got called away to re-threaten his own minions (apparently, the Red Skull wasn’t scary enough?  Isaac was really hoping the writing on this was better than it looked to him), and it was just Steve, Isaac, and Lee in the lounge, Jodie having gone back to work with a roll of her eyes.  

Lee was flipping through the rest of the drag pictures on Steve’s phone, of which there were a surprising number.  Isaac had been embarrassed to admit that he would probably not have spotted Tony Stark as being Tony Stark in Drag; all of them spotted Pepper, though.  She looked… really good, actually.  

Kind of French.

Lee flicked back to the first three pictures, studying the second and third.  

The second was black-and-white, and Isaac thought it was Steve’s posture, as much as his looks, which had completed the illusion.  The wig they’d found him was chin-length, and curled; the pale color was either blonde or red.  The dress had a soft drape at the neckline and puffy belled sleeves that reminded Isaac of _The Sound of Music_ , an A-line skirt that ended just below the knees, and little dots of darker gray on it which - Isaac squinted.  “Flowers?” he asked.

“Yeah, little lilacs,” Steve confirmed.  

Lee swiped right.

This picture was completely different.  For one thing, Steve was clearly the focus of this one; Isaac would have bet that Tony Stark had taken it with a cell phone.  For another, it was in color, the red of Steve’s wig popping like a cherry.  “That wig is actually a really dark color on you,” Lee noted.  

Steve grinned.  “Want to know where Tony got the wig?” he asked.  

“Oh, no,” said Isaac.

_“Natasha_ left it with him,” Steve went on, tearing right through Isaac’s dismay.  “Apparently, she had gone undercover at Stark Industries when scoping out Tony for participation in the Avengers, and wore _that wig_ the whole time.”  

Isaac got a mental image, and closed his eyes to savor it.  

“Then, when she left, she squirreled away the wig on Tony’s hat stand, which Tony never looks at because Tony never wears hats.  By the time he found it, it was almost four months later; the Battle of Manhattan had already happened, Tony was on the Avengers, and Natasha’s new haircut was on all the news channels.”  Steve smiled, wryly.  “He told me I could keep the wig.”

“I don’t think it would work without the dress,” Isaac said, hovering his hand over the phone.  “See, the color…?”  

Steve was nodding, so he must be communicating something.  “Yeah, the color’s a little too bright for my normal hair, it needs the dark of the wig to balance it.”

“You did your eyebrows,” Lee notices, comparing.  

Steve’s nodding again.  “That was the worst part, plucking those.  Then they used a pencil to darken them.”

Lee smiled.  “You know what I like about this picture?  Both of these, actually, although I guess -” He swiped left. “-this one, given the time period, it was a little different.”  

“What?”” asked Isaac.

“He doesn’t look like a drag queen in either one of them,” Lee says.  “Not that there’s anything wrong with drag queens, but there’s also something to be said for dressing up to actually look like what you’re pretending to be.  You know?”

Isaac nodded, seeing the point.  

“No,” said Steve, uncertainly.

“It’s like…”  Lee zoomed in on the black and white picture, focusing on Steve’s face with it’s darkened eyelashes and pouty lips.  Isaac looked up, and was startled to realize the lips hadn’t really changed that much.  

Lee held the phone up.  “This person isn’t someone who wants to be spotted as a man.”  Swiped right, zoomed in on the face again.  “Neither is this person, although she will be, just because of her build.”

Steve frowned.  “You know that’s me, right?” he said.  “And that I’m not a her?”

“No, I get that.  I think _she_ might be a her, though.  I mean, you weren’t trying to be spotted as a man, right?  You were going whole-hearted, all-out with this.  Weren’t you?”

Steve still wore a worried little line in the middle of his face.  “Yeah, I guess,” he agreed.  

Lee let the phone fall into his lap, studying Steve, and ran a hand through his hair.  Took a breath, let it out.  “Look,” he said finally.  “Isaac and I talked about you the first day we met you.  Right before you walked in with Jodie, actually.”

“Okay?”

“And we agreed - mostly Isaac, this is his thinking here, but he’s usually pretty good at this stuff - that there were three of you.”

“Three of me.”  That definitely sounded Captain-y, and a lot like he was humoring them, too.

“Isaac, can you put these on?” Lee asked, and Isaac nodded, standing and moving back by the door.  He hesitated, then locked it.

Neither of the other men missed the action, and Steve’s shoulders un-hunched a notch.

“Okay.  Steve-Rogers-with-People.  This is also, we know now, Steve-Rogers-with-Pretty-Ladies.”  Isaac raised his shoulders, ducking hesitantly and looking up through his eyelashes, making an abortive gesture with his hands as if participating - hesitantly - in a conversation.  The tension was a rigid line in his lower back.

“Steve-Rogers-with-Friends,” Lee continued, and Isaac dropped his shoulders, standing straight, challenging grin stretching across his features.  He turned his head to the side, watching an imaginary person out of the corners of his eyes.  Smirked a little, waited for them to realize they were being punked.  “We decided we liked that guy,” Lee mentioned to Steve.  

“What, before the lunch even?” Steve asked, startled.  

“Yeah,” Isaac said, crossing his arms, still in character, the borough strong in his voice.  “He’s pretty cool.”

Steve blinked at him, stunned.

“Okay. _Captain America.”_  

Isaac did it, puffing his chest a little, raising his chin, tiny _bravissimo_ line forming between his eyebrows, gaze direct and, a bit, pugnacious.

And, because it needed it…  “I should mention that the Captain America Face comes complete with the Captain America Voice,” he said with finality.

“Wow.”  Steve said, breath coming rapid, and Isaac frowned and dropped character.  Not necessarily in that order, but then, he wasn’t really paying attention.  “Don’t you think -” Steve started to say, then broke off because he had to, because he was panic-breathing.  

“Steve?” Isaac asked, coming and sitting beside him again.  

Lee went a step further, and put his arm around Steve, who turned into his embrace in a move that disconcerted all of them.  Steve’s hand rose to grip Lee’s shirt, his breathing accelerating to the point of true hyperventilation.  

“Isn’t that kind of crazy?” he asked, voice tiny.

Lee exchanged one panicked look with Isaac, who shot back a baffled expression which hopefully conveyed, _I have no clue what to do, what the fuck do we do?_

Apparently, that worked, or gave Lee an idea, or _something,_ because Lee took a deep breath, put his hand on Steve’s shoulder, and began to talk to him.  

In _Bucky_ voice.

“Hey, Stevie,” he said.  “It’s okay.  You’re okay, we’re all safe here, huh?  You gonna look at me?”

Steve shook his head.

“Okay.  What about breathing with me, can you do that?  It’s just in-one-two, out-one-two.  C’mon, let’s try it.”  

Lee gave Isaac a glare, and belatedly, Isaac started breathing on his count.  

  
  


A few minutes later, Isaac got up, dusted himself off, and grabbed napkins and sodas from the far wall of the lounge.  He sat down next to Lee and Steve again, passing over a drink to the former, and a drink and napkins to the later, then cracked the tab on his own Diet Coke.  Then he got out his phone and texted Jodie.  

 

> **_Isaac:_ ** _Lee and I need another half hour of personal time at least.  Can you talk to people to make sure we get it?_
> 
> **_Jodie McAwesome:_ ** Sure.  
>  **_Jodie McAwesome:_ ** _Is everything okay?  
>  _ **_Jodie McAwesome:_ ** Nvm, obv not.  I’ll make it happen.
> 
> **_Isaac:_ ** _Thank you_
> 
> **_Jodie McAwesome:_ ** _If you are using this time for boning, I will be SO MAD  
>  _ **_Jodie McAwesome:_ ** _I will also demand pictures.  
>  _ **_Jodie McAwesome:_ ** _fair warning_

Lee looked a question at him.

“We’re okay,” said Isaac quietly.  “Jodie’s buying us some time.”  

Lee nodded.  

Steve blew his nose.  

“Hey,” said Lee in his quiet, moderate way.  “ _There_ you are.”  He managed to sound both genuinely glad to see Steve, and not worried at all, which just went to show he was a much, much better actor than Isaac was.  

Isaac, not trusting his voice, popped the top on the… huh, Cherry Coke, apparently… and passed it over.  

Lee took a deep breath, in and out, then asked, “You back with us?  I need you to answer out loud, here.”

Steve swallowed.  “I’m with you,” he said, and Lee and Isaac exchanged a _look_ over the amount of Brooklyn in his voice.

“Okay,” said Lee.  “So we were saying, there’s three of you.”  

Steve breathed in sharply, caught himself, _held_ it, and let the breath go in a controlled fashion.  

“Good job,” said Isaac.

“Yes,” agreed Lee.  “So what I was about to say after _that_ was, there’s three of Isaac, too.”

“I would say five,” argued Isaac, then jerked his thumb at Steve, seeing now where Lee was going with this.  “Because _he’s_ got three.”

“Okay,” agreed Lee again.  “And I’ve got about half a dozen - No, eight,” and he counted them up, nodding at the end.  “Eight.”

“Say something?” asked Isaac.

Steve breathed, in and out.  “You’re actors,” he said.

“Yeah,” agreed Isaac easily.  “So’re you.”

_And if it’s kind of crazy to have three people inside of you,_ he didn’t say, _then that’s okay, because everyone knows actors are crazy._

“We _were_ thinking…”  Lee stopped, shrugged.  “Well, we didn’t discuss this part, but _I_ was thinking, anyway, that your acting career started when you became Captain America.  It made sense: all that time in front of people, and also _around_ people, who were so different from what you’d always known…”

Isaac bobbed his head again.  “Made sense,” he put in.

“But now I’m wondering if it didn’t start earlier.  Some of those stories about you and Bucky as kids, those involve kind of a lot of acting on your part.”

Steve met one of their eyes for the first time in ten minutes.  Isaac was _totally fine_ with him picking Lee’s eyes over his.

“So you think that’s all it is?  Acting?”

Lee looked at him evenly.  “I think that it’s very satisfying to have an option to be _someone else,_ for a while,” he said, his voice soothing.  “I don’t think that desire is limited to actors.  I think that’s why Halloween is so popular.  And I think there’s more than three of you,” he added, infinitely gentle, like his heart was breaking.  “I think there’s at least four.”

And he touched the phone with the picture of Steve in the lilac-covered dress.

Steve’s face...

Isaac hesitated, then leaned in, wrapping his arm around Steve.  

He’d avoided this, avoided it _repeatedly_ over the last few weeks when Jodie, Darcy, and even Lee had hugged Steve, because Isaac _did not like to touch._ He barely even touched _Jodie,_ and Jodie was…

Isaac set the subject of Jodie and what she meant to him aside to be examined later.

Or never.  Never was good, too.

The point was, Isaac didn’t hug, and he’d actually gotten the vibe from Steve that that was comforting, that it was good to have someone around who put a barrier between them and the rest of the world.  

But Steve’s _face_.  It looked...

Isaac sighed into Steve’s neck.  

It had looked like Steve really, really needed a hug.

“Steve,” said Lee from behind him.  “There’s something you’re not telling us.”  He didn’t sound chiding, or paternal, at all; he sounded totally even, just like he had before.  “And I would be okay with that, but I think it’s hurting you.  I know it’s scary, but I think you should tell Isaac and me.  And we won’t tell anyone, anyone at all, not even Darcy or Jodie.”  He paused.  “We’ve told you that before.”

_Oh._ Isaac nodded hastily, unhesitating in the face of Steve’s distress.  “We won’t tell,” he promised, voice muffled.  “You’re safe.”

Steve made an _awful_ noise, a relieved gasp that _ripped Isaac’s heart in two._

Isaac squeezed harder.  

“Steve,” Lee said, compassionate.  “Tell us how you felt about Bucky Barnes.”

Steve gasped again, and Isaac said, _“Steve,”_ and Steve said, _“I loved him.”_

There was quiet in the little room, while Isaac rubbed Steve’s back and Lee rubbed his shoulder and neither of them said _anything._ Lee started breathing on the in-two-three, out-two-three rhythm again, although he didn't count it out, and Isaac took the cue and breathed along with him.  Eventually, Steve joined the paced breathing, and pulled back, sitting back on his heels and leaning his head back against the wall.  He wasn’t looking at them, but he also wasn’t running, or hunched up.  

He didn't seem to be hiding; he was just tired.  

“I loved him,” Steve repeated to the ceiling, “like a brother.”  He tipped his head down, and met their eyes.  “And at the same time, not like a brother at all.”  His tongue came out to moisten dry lips, and Isaac handed him the Cherry Coke.  

Steve nodded his thanks, then sighed.  “And he only ever knew about one of those,” Steve finished.  

Lee made a wounded noise, and Steve met his eyes, gave a wry smile.  “If he had ever,” he started, then swallowed, took a sip of the soda, swallowed again..  “If he had _ever_ looked at me the way I looked at him…”  

He shook his head.  Sighed.  

“But he didn’t,” he finished.  

Lee looked _wrecked._

Isaac, watching them both be broken, tried to think of something to say to _fix it,_ make it better.  Finally, desperately, he put his hand out.

Steve looked at it, confused, then took it.

Isaac shook it.  “Still your friend,” he said.  “I thought you should know that first.”

Steve nodded.

“That was brave, what you just did.”

He shuddered, but nodded again.

“We won’t tell.”

He closed his eyes, relieved.  “Thank you,” he whispered.

“I’d hug you again, but I really hate hugging people,” Isaac finished.

And Steve laughed.  Just a little, but a real laugh, and not bitter.  “I appreciate the thought,” he said.

Isaac nodded, then got up.  “I’m going to go wash my face,” he said firmly, “And then I’m going to go out on the sound stage and do my job.  Lee, you’ve got another hour in here, at least.  I’ll have them text you a fifteen-minute warning.  If that’s not enough, tell them you’ve got a family emergency, then _call_ your mom and ask her to send you a _text_ to cover for you.”

“Yes, sir, Lieutenant Greeley,” Lee joked tiredly.

Isaac hesitated, then added, “Lock the door after me when I’m gone.”

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes!  
> 1) Time management is a problem in this fic. On the one hand, fics where people fall in love / become best friends / abandon their families / etc over people they have known for days... those fics drive me insane. (Or books, as the case may be. Romance genre, I'm looking at you.) So I was trying to avoid it by spreading the time out, which is why the Lee/Darcy thing comes and goes so quickly. It was a thing, it stopped being a thing, they're still good friends, moving on. 
> 
> But, I didn't realize how long it would be between the end of filming and the screening of the television show, which has changed since I looked up schedules. My options are a) assume CA:TWS comes later in the year (September would be optimal); b) have the plotty bit come before the screening of the THC show; or c) handwave the post-production down to a couple months. I have not figured out how I'm handling this yet, and it's what's slowing me down on the action chapter.
> 
> 2) In case Steve seems weirdly open about telling people he sometimes crossdresses: Steve is very careful about his audience here. He tells Isaac, Lee, and Jodie, who at this point have been good friends to him and have not judged him on basically anything, BUT who also seem to see STEVE, not Captain America; and he tells Tim, who is himself gay and very open about it, and who has also been quite friendly. And even then, when Isaac isn't immediately supportive, Steve still backs up and goes into Captain Mode.
> 
> 3) In the 1938 incident, Steve's dress was yellow, with little purple flowers, and his wig was blond. I spent a lot of time looking up dress fashions in the 1930's and 1940's for this, and came to the conclusion that the dress would have to have been somewhat fashion-forward to be flattering to the figure Steve didn't really have. 
> 
> 4) The wig being Natasha's is headcanon to explain having that much long, lose hair in a fight like she did in IM:2. It's not a weakness to grabbing, because it comes right off! 
> 
> 5) Isaac shakes hands significantly in this chapter, twice. That harkens back to the use of handshakes in religious ceremony; the Sharing of the Peace in Christian service springs to mind, and that's probably where Isaac gets it, but honestly, it REALLY comes from my own experiences as a Quaker, ending the worship service with a handshake. It's a very formal, but significant, gesture.


	6. Lee

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Steve Rogers actually _gets_ hugs, and it turns out that Lee needs some, too.

 

Lee watched Isaac close the door behind him, then tapped Steve on the shoulder.  “I have to lock the door,” he apologized, indicating where Steve was blocking him in against the wall.  

“Right,” Steve muttered, not meeting his eyes.  “Sorry.”

“Not problem,” Lee said, eyeing him with concern as he braced up the wall.  He stepped over Steve’s outstretched leg, crossed to the door, locked it.  

Came back and crouched down beside Steve, studying him.  

Then he looked around the room.  “Right,” he decided, “Here we go.”  He grabbed three  of the square, brightly-colored pillows Jodie had stashed the room with, propping two vertically against the wall and the third laying flat in front of it.  Then he sat on the flat one, legs outstretched in front of him, and opened his arms, making grabby-hands like Darcy around cupcakes.  

“C’mere,” he said, and Steve looked instantly embarrassed.  “No, I mean…  Look, sometimes we just need other people.  It’s something I learned a couple years ago.”  Lee hesitated, then rushed on, “I’ll tell you the story once you’re all settled in.  Unless, I mean… Would it _bother_ you, getting hugged for a while?  Like, twenty minutes?”

Steve looked _trapped,_ like… like he wanted to lie, but couldn’t.  Not meeting Lee’s eyes, he admitted, “No,” as if it were the most humiliating thing in the world.  Lee didn’t say a word, because the last thing Steve needed right now was someone arguing with him about his emotions, and half a minute of patience later, Steve was curling his large frame into the space between Lee’s legs.

_Score one for the emotionally stable person in the room!_  Although the fact that Lee seemed to be the healthier of them was frankly concerning...

“That’s right,” Lee said, keeping his tone carefully in the “praising” range, and right the hell away from “baby talk”.  Steve was a proud kind of guy, he probably hated to have people condescend to him.  “Just… here.  Lean back like that, and I’ll-”

\- Rest a hand in his hair, scratching lightly at the skull.  The other hand wrapped around Steve’s left hip, fingers hooking through the belt loops to pin him, however loosely, in place.

Lee sighed, relieved.   _Step one: establishing physical contact as a means of conveying emotional comfort?  Down._

_Steps two through unknown?  Eh, still to go._

“So, the _Everybody Needs Hugs Sometimes_ story.  During the third season of Darkest Night,” Lee began, then stopped.  “No, wait, let me back up.  

“CB productions, the guys who made Darkest Night, they’re a really small company.  CB cuts corners on all kinds of things, so people who worked their either _really liked_ being overworked and underpaid, or…  Well, actually, the _or_ is that they don’t last very long.  As a result, all of us who were there long-term were a little on the crazy side.”  

Working side-by-side with Western Canada’s most powerful wizard may also have been a factor in that.

Probably not relevant to the story, though.  

“For example, Scary Amy.”

Lee took the hand off Steve’s head to fish his phone out of his pocket, pull up his contacts, and show Steve the picture:  Amy at her desk, black patent-leather boots laced up to her calf, short skirt, skull-patterned lace stocking, angry-looking black blouse, intricately-painted fingernails, electric blue streaks in her hair, and eyes sharp enough to cut glass.  

Lee had no idea how long Amy spent on her physical appearance in a day, but he would bet it was longer than he spent on his own in a week, and Lee was an _actor._

Steve looked at the picture for minute, then asked, “So who was Scary Amy?”

Lee dropped the phone on the ground beside him, and went back to lightly scratching Steve’s scalp.  “Scary Amy was... not the office manager, actually; I think, technically, her title was receptionist, but you’d be taking your balls in your hand to call her that.  She knew all, she monitored all…  She had a very threatening stapler.”

Steve gave a little huff, which probably was a laugh.  

Hopefully.  

It _wanted_ to be a laugh, someday, when it grew up.

“Scary Amy was a goth, a total oddball.  The weirder life got, the more in her element she was, and her response to any danger, from an insane fan threatening someone with a pipe in Season One, to the Great Latte Screaming Match of Season Four, was to snarl a challenge.

“And Amy was dating this Mountie.  Which, honestly, should not have worked even a little bit, but Amy was a rule unto herself, and Jack was pretty hot in an unimaginative sort of way, so…”  Lee shrugged, dropping his scratches from Steve’s head to his neck for a while.  “If Scary Amy wanted to date a Mountie, we were not going to stop her.”

“Mm.”  That sounded like… comprehension?  Agreement?  Enjoyment of the scritches?  Could have gone any one of a number of ways, but Lee took it for the first option and moved on.

“So, third season, some idiot, who clearly had never met her, decided that Amy was the weak point in Jack’s life.  I guess Jack and Constable Danvers - that was his Mountie partner - were investigating some kind of big-deal drug thing, and someone thought that should stop.  They threatened Constable Danvers’ family, and they kidnapped Scary Amy beat her up.  Pretty badly; broken bones, damaged kidney, and her face was a mess _._ ”

Steve tensed, and Lee moved from scratching his neck to petting his shoulder.  

“It was…  Everyone was upset.  They put her in the hospital, and Jack and Constable Danvers got pulled off the case, which pissed Jack off, of course.  Then, to make it even worse, Jack and  Amy broke up because, well…  Basically, because Jack was being an idiot about it, _I_ would say, but I’m... pretty partial.  He didn’t want her in danger, was the gist of it.”

Lee had strong feelings on people who shut out their loved ones to keep them out of danger.

_Not relevant to the story._

Amy’d still had dark bruises around her eyes and jaw when Jack told her they were done.  Her reply had been two words long, and loud enough to be heard from a block away, where Lee and Tony were walking over with soup (Lee) and booze (Tony).  The two men had exchanged a look, and broken into a run, getting to her door just as Jack stumbled out of it, looking like a man going to the electric chair.  They had passed each other without exchanging words, and Lee still thought that was probably for the best.  

“When Tony and I got inside her house, it was only a minute after he’d left.  Amy was still sitting in a chair by the dining table, because she couldn’t leave without her crutches, which were on the far wall.  And she was crying.

“Amy wasn’t really a crier.  She loved tragic, romantic movies as much as the next woman, but in day-to-day life?  It wasn’t really her style.  Seeing her in tears was…

“But that’s the whole point:  We got her moved to her couch, and Tony and I sat on either side of her and gave her hugs.  I gave her the soup I brought, and Tony gave her the booze _he_ brought, and she leaned into us and just _sobbed_.  

“Amy said she didn’t mind being dumped, and apart from in ‘a common sense way,’ she didn’t mind getting beat up for the man she loved.  But she was mad as hell that she got beaten, _then_ dumped before she’d healed from the beating, and mad most of all that he hadn’t given her a chance to fix the problem.  That he’d just _left,_ and she was powerless to stop it.  

“She wasn’t a woman who appreciated powerlessness,” Lee added wryly, and Steve gave that little huffing laugh-noise again.

“We hugged her into oblivion, and she actually fell asleep on top of me, and Tony threw a blanket over her and took about a million pictures of us together, one of which he texted to Jack, because he’s an asshole.”

“Tony, or Jack?” asked Steve in a watery voice, and Lee grinned internally, because that?  That was actually a _joke,_ and Steve was going to be alright.

“Both of them, definitely.  But later, when she was feeling better, I mentioned it to her, how…”  Lee thought for a moment, then pulled the right word.  “How disconcerting it was, her crying and needing hugs, when usually she was so…”  He sighed.  “And she just told me - in a tone that made it clear she thought I was an idiot - that everyone has those days sometimes, or those subjects that bring them on, or nightmares, or what have you, when they can do is lean on other people, and get lots of hugs, and drink chicken soup and cheap vodka.

“So,” Lee finished, and waved his hand in the air before settling it opposite the other one on Steve’s hip.  “Here’s your soup and vodka.  Drink up.”

Steve laughed for real at that, still sounding freaked out, but less so.  Lee didn’t push; he figured that keeping Steve wrapped in the hug was more important than making conversation.  Lee’d read somewhere that humans released endorphins when they were cuddling; he wasn’t sure if that was true or not, but if it was, he figured it could only help Steve.  

After a while, Steve cleared his throat.  “Did they ever get back together?” he asked.  “Jack and Scary Amy, I mean.”  

“Oh, yeah,” said Lee.  “They did, actually, the next year, during the filming of Season Four.  That was an… _eventful_ season.”  Brianna had tentatively been allowed to work with them on special cases, and generally caused more problems than she solved.

_Although there were some problems she solved_ definitively…

“Good,” said Steve.  “Uh.  Them getting back together, I mean.  It sounds like there was some real love there.”  

“There did seem to be,” agreed Lee.  Steve reached out one ridiculously long arm, stretching for his Cherry Coke, and Lee let go of his left loop long enough for him to grab the can.  Steve settled back in once he had it though, drinking deeply and then giving a gasping sigh.  

“Thirsty?”

“Yeah, thanks,” he muttered, crumpling up the empty can in one firm twist of his hands.  “So who’s Tony?”

Lee froze.  

“You mentioned him coming to see Amy with you…  Someone else from the studio, I’m guessing?”

Lee licked suddenly dry lips.  “Yeah,” he said.  “He was…”

_Jesus._

“Tony started out a PA, like Jodie is now,” Lee started over.  “But unlike Jodie, who wants to be a POC, Tony wanted to direct.  By the end of the final season, he was an assistant director.  He was really good at it, too,” he added, and knew that his pride was coming through in his voice, maybe too much, and maybe he should tone it down, except…

Except.  

Steve had told him about _Bucky;_ there was no way Lee could pay him back by chickening out.

The memory of Tony making clucking noises at him _didn’t help._  

Lee took an even breath.  “Tony was also my boyfriend,” he said.  

Steve sat up, and Lee closed his eyes.  He could feel that Steve was moving, pivoting to crouch in front of him, face to face.  He just…  couldn’t look.  

Not yet.  

“Lee?” asked Steve.  He sounded worried, damnit.

_Steve told me about Bucky,_ Lee reminded himself, and opened his eyes.  “He was amazing,” Lee whispered, then cleared his throat, trying to get his voice back under control and hating how broken he sounded, _still_ sounded, a year after their split.  

Steve took his hand.  “Tell me,” he ordered, but it wasn’t the Captain Voice.  “Soup and vodka, right?”

“Right.”  Lee breathed deep, in and out, and tried it again.  “Right.  So Tony…  When I first met him, he had the biggest cru -”  Lee saw it coming, now, the train that rode the rails of this conversation, and was heading straight for the two of them, tied up on the tracks.  And it was far too late to stop it or head it off.  “Hang on,” he said, and called his mother.  

“This is not the best place to talk about this,” he told Steve as smoothly as he could when she’d hung up, and his phone began chiming with texts telling him that his mythical Aunt Sarah was in the hospital, and she probably wouldn’t last the night, “and I think we’re going to need some non-metaphorical vodka.”

Then he called Nate.

Ten minutes later, Steve was escorting Lee into Tony Stark’s Corvette, and ten minutes after that, they were settling into Steve’s suite in Avengers Tower with hot chocolate liberally spiked with Amaretto.  

“Oh,” said Steve, sounding surprised.  “This is good.”  

“Yeah.  If you don’t have Amaretto, I actually recommend chocolate syrup and Goldschlager.”  Lee took a sip.  “So.

“I met Tony the first day of shooting,” he said, closing his eyes to remember.  “I remember thinking that he wasn’t going to last.  

“There’s a pattern, in the industry.  You have to have a certain kind of love for it, and it can’t be the love that says, ‘Wow, that’s great.’  It has to be the love that says, ‘I want to make that _better.’_  If you’re too busy being starry-eyed, you drop right out when the going gets tough.”

Steve nodded.  “I’ve seen that a few time with people who work with Tony,” he commented, and Lee bobbed his head.  

“Exactly.  I met Tony - Tony Foster, I mean not Tony Stark, obviously - when he walked up, held out my call sheets, and then dropped them because he was staring at me with this _embarrassing_ level of…”  Lee trailed off, blushing, trying to find a word that didn’t sound completely conceited.  

“Admiration?” Steve suggested.  “From the Latin, meaning _to look at?”_

Lee laughed.  “I did not know you spoke Latin,” he said by way of agreeing.

“I don’t,” Steve assured him.  “I had to study it for a couple years in school - Catholic orphanage - but I never really retained much.  I was much better at the spoken languages around me.”

“Alright.  Well, that says it all:  Tony looked at me, and became suddenly the clumsiest, most tongue-tied person on the planet.  I thought, ‘Oh, good, another starry-eyed PA who will last a week and then give up in a huff.’  I had been on a couple of productions where that happened at that point, and it always left them in the lurch, so I was not a fan.”  Lee drank some more hot chocolate.  “I’d also already met CB, who was terrifying, and Mason, who was a narcissist.  I figured this little guy would crawl home in a week.”

“But you were wrong,” prompted Steve.  

_“So_ wrong.”  Lee closed his eyes against it, against the moment when he’d realized that not only had Tony never quit, not only had Tony become actually _extremely good at his job,_ but he had something else, something that didn’t back down, that held on, that didn’t need to lead, but sure needed to follow something fundamentally _good._

Lee breathed, in and out, like he had with Steve earlier that day.

“It took about one episode - a bit more than a week - to realize that Tony’s starry-eyed act was only around me; around the rest of the set, he was a totally normal guy.  Kind of funny, even.  Also, he was always willing to get his hands dirty, but not lemming-style willing like some of the fangirls would have been.”

Lee gave a half-smile.  “Tony was also Out-and-Proud, so it wasn’t hard to put _acts like a spaz around me_ together with _gay man_ and get _crush._  And _everybody_ knew, too.  Tony dated the music direct, Zev Sero, for a few months in the first season, and I know for a _fact_ that Zev knew about the crush the whole time.”

Steve grimaced.  “That must have been awful for him.”

“Not as bad as you would think, according to both of the men in question, but I admit I didn’t press for more details.  I think it helped that, until Tony, I and everyone else genuinely believed I was straight.”  

Steve looked surprised.

“I’d had sexual feelings towards men before,” Lee filled in, answering the unspoken question, “but not…  I hadn’t realized that was what they were, because I’d never had _romantic_ feelings for a man.  

"So.  I thought I was straight, and Tony thought I was straight, and every time one of Tony’s friends encouraged him to make a move on me - which they did, frequently where I could hear them, which was incredibly embarrassing for both of us - Tony would explain to them that I was straight.”

“And functionally, you were,” Steve observed.  

“Well, yeah.”  Lee rolled his eyes.  “I also have never been particularly attracted to people who were falling all over me.”

_“That_ I can understand."  

Of course he could. 

"So what changed?”

“He stopped falling all over me.  And, also…”

Lee got up and splashed some more cocoa - Steve had made it old-school, in a saucepan of it on the stove - and a lot more amaretto in his mug, to buy some time while he thought.  Tony’s suspicion that the Shadowlord had jump-started Lee’s sexuality was not particularly relevant, and would definitely only confuse the matter.  

The haunted house, on the other hand, _was_ relevant - Lee still woke up from _incredibly creepy_ dreams where he was making out with Tony to the sound of a screaming baby and the _err, err_ of a swinging body.  

And really, the less said about Leah, _or_ about the Demonic Convergence, the better.

Still…

“I had a dream,” Lee said, coming back to the couch.  Technically true; Steve didn’t need to know that the dream was based in magically-suppressed memory.  But, just in case it ever came out...  “Please understand,” he added, “There are a lot of things I’m cutting out of this story, things that are complicated and only tangentially related.  But basically, I had a dream, where Tony came in to talk to me in my dressing room, and then I was kissing him, and locking the door, and…”  He swallowed.  “It was a very vivid dream.

“It came back again, every two weeks or so, the whole time Tony was dating Zev.  I felt - God, I felt a little crazy, because I didn’t _do_ that with men.  And to make matters worse, _everybody_ knew Tony had a crush on me, and that included me, so what if I was only dreaming about him because he was making himself so _available?_ Or, worse than that, what if I was really only dreaming about him because he had started dating Zev, and I was mad that he _stopped_ being so available?”

Steve winced.  “Okay,” he agreed, _“That_ thought I’ve had.”

Lee was suddenly distracted.  “You have?  Who?”

“Uh,” Steve cringed.  “Darcy?”

Lee’s eyes widened.   _“Really.”_

“If you _ever_ tell her, I will blame it on the amaretto and disinvite you to Pizza Night,” Steve said viciously.

“I won't,” Lee shook his head, quirked one of his Charming smiles at Steve.  “Your secret is safe with me.”

“Phew.”  Steve topped off his own cocoa, although he used a lot less amaretto than Lee had.  “So,” he said, settling back into the couch.  “You were going mad, dreaming about him.”

He somehow managed not to make that summary sound completely insane; Steve really did have a naturally theatrical temperament.  

“Yeah.”  Lee licked his lips, which suddenly felt very dry.  “And then he and Zev broke up, and I decided that I could try to make something of it, _or_ I could just have maddeningly PG sex dreams about him for the rest of my life.  Trust me that making a move seemed preferable.

“So I started flirting with him, just a little.”

“What did he say?”

“He said, ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Lee is straight’,” Lee said dryly.  “For _months_ .  I kept making overtures, but each time he would look interested, but not _act,_ and later, he told me that he had been doubting what he was seeing because he thought it was wishful thinking.  I finally gave up, grew a pair, and just kissed him.”  In Caulfield House.  Lee swallowed, thinking about how to play the next part.  

Steve smiled a little, anticipating a happy ending.  “I take it that went well?”

Lee put on his tragic half-smile that he’d worn so often before.  “Well, the kissing part did.  That part was _great._ But immediately afterwards, everything went wrong on the set.”  He paused, letting his eyelashes sweep down.  “I don’t mind you knowing about this, but I would rather not talk about it,” he said.  “There was a gas leak.”  And he did not hesitate before the words _gas leak,_ even though it always felt like the corniest line he’d ever delivered.  

Lee had delivered a lot of corny lines.  He had  _practice,_ damn it.

“People went pretty crazy," he continued.  "That was the Haunted House episode.  You can probably look up the police report easily enough.”

“Police report?”  Steve eyebrows were up.

“Three people died.”

Steve eyebrows rose considerably higher.

“It’s why I don’t watch the Haunted House episode,” Lee added.  

Steve’s eyes were compassionate, and not judgmental at all.  “I’m sorry.”

Lee shrugged, keeping his shoulders loose.  “Not your fault,” he said.  “Anyway.  After that, I lost my nerve, and Tony and I danced around each other for nearly three more months before he really believed I was serious about getting together.”

“And then what did you do?” asked Steve.

Lee raised his left eyebrow, meaning clear even without the the smirk.

“Oh.”  Steve  _blushed._ It was  _adorable,_ Lee would probably never admit.

Lee put his cocoa mug on the table, settling further into Steve’s overstuffed couch.  

“The good news was, after that, he pretty much stopped protesting that I was straight.  The bad new was, that wasn’t the end of our problems.  

“The closet was the biggest one.  I was…”  Lee toyed with the velour fabric covering the couch, brushing the nap first one way, then the other.  “I’d never felt that way before Tony.  Saying it out loud to my family, it was a big step.  It took me almost a year to tell my mother, there was _no way_ I was telling the press.”

Steve nodded fervently.  Well, he _would_ know about that part.

Lee gave the velour a tidy pat, smoothing down the marks he’d made, then started over, drawing with his index finger.

“Tony understood at first, but as time went on, of course it wore at him.  I _know_ he was frustrated that we didn’t go out in public on dates.  

“There were other issues, as well.  Things that probably had more to do with my personal maturity than our relationship.”  Lee smiled self-deprecatingly.  “Tony always was more mature than I was, even though I had a few years on him.

“And then there was the distance.  Between seasons of _Darkest Night,_ I would audition for movie rolls.  When I started getting them, I was gone, once in Australia, once here in New York City.  Tony was still back in Vancouver, picking up work in local studios.

“Eventually, _Darkest Night_ was ending, I had the Bucky roll signed for, a secondary lead in a movie scheduled for before _THC_ started filming, and I was moving to New York for good, expecting that Tony would join me here.  He refused.  Well,” Lee revised, determined to be fair, “what he actually said was that he would come with me if I would come out, but since I would have been fired if I had come out, that wasn’t going to happen.”  

Tony had known that.  Had even said it:

_You know they’ll find a way to get rid of me if I do that, right?  Maybe on another show, it’d be okay, but not the Captain America show.  There’s no way._

_Pretty good chance you'll get fired, yeah.  But there are always more jobs.  If you were willing to take the risk._

_You’re asking me to choose between you and my career!_

_No, I’m not.  You’ve already done that; I’m asking you to admit it._

“So we broke up,” Lee finished.  “And I should probably be moving on, but I can’t tell you how much interest I _just don’t have_ in that.”  

He watched Steve through his lashes, thinking about how to phrase the next thing, the thing that had had him taking a family day even though his family was fine.

The problem was, if he didn’t tell Steve now, sooner or later Steve was going to figure it out.  He would put together the facts, do the math, and arrive at an answer which may or may not be correct - the world would never know which.  It seemed cruel, even foolhardy, to leave that sitting in Steve’s way like a bear trap, instead of springing the trap now in a controlled environment.   

Lee frowned.

Stalled.

“Are you hungry?”

Steve tilted his head to the side.  “I’m pretty much always hungry,” he said.  “Why, were you thinking of getting dinner together?”

“I wasn’t thinking anything much; mostly, I was distracted by being hungry,” Lee admitted.

Steve laughed.  “I have a bunch of cans of soup in my cupboard,” he said.  “We could go for _literal_ soup and vodka.”

Fuck it, he wasn’t going to get a better opening than that, and stalling wouldn't help.

Lee bit his lip and stretched out his arm, putting his hand on Steve’s.  “That might be a good idea,” he said, keeping his voice neutral.  “Steve.”  Lee waited until he had Steve’s full attention, then went on.  “I was twenty-eight when I met Tony, and that was my _first inkling_ that I might be interested in a guy.”

He squeezed the hand he was holding.

“How old was Bucky when he died?”

  
  


Lee woke up at three morning, lying on an overstuffed velour couch covered in a supersoldier blanket.  He was sweating, unsure why Steve wasn’t roasting himself awake, and his bladder felt like it was going to explode.  The lights in the room were still on, because neither of them had actually meant to fall asleep on the couch.  

Lee had fallen asleep because he’d been up since five for makeup; Steve most likely had done so because that much emotion was _exhausting._

“Steve?” he whispered.

The enormous man draped over him didn’t budge.  Lee thought he had maybe twenty seconds to fix this before it became a problem.

He took a breath, smelling the too-sweet smell of the hot chocolate they’d left on the stove, and shoved hard.  Steve lifted just enough to shift six inches to the right, towards the edge of the couch.

The movement did _nothing at all_ to help Lee's predicament.

“Steve!” Lee yelled.  “Get up!”

That did it.  

  
  


In the end, Lee ended up staying the night, camping in Steve’s guest room.  In the morning, he texted Darcy: 

 

> **_Lee:_ ** _Told Steve about Tony last night_  
>  **_Lee:_ ** _aka came out to Steve last night  
>  _**_Lee:_ ** _Big night.  
>  _**_Lee:_ ** _Wanna help me make pancakes?_

Darcy showed up and wrapped her arms around Lee’s neck, telling him how proud she was of him, how that was a _huge step,_ and Lee pointedly made eye contact with Steve over her head.  

Steve rolled his eyes and glared back, and Lee felt a little less worried about him.  

The pancakes had walnuts and chocolate chips in them, and were _delicious._

  
  


 

> **Lee:** I’m in kind of a weird position right now, and I thought of you  
>  **Lee:** (Not like that)  
>  **Lee:** Just I have this friend.  He’s closeted  
>  **Lee:** And I’m the one trying to convince him it’s okay to tell his friends  
>  **Lee:** It’s weird. 
> 
> **The Ex:**...  
>  **The Ex:  
>  ** **The Ex:**...  
>  **The Ex:** Kinda hypocritical, too.    
>  **The Ex:** Although you did tell your friends and family.  
>  **The Ex:** Eventually. 
> 
> **Lee:** My coworkers all knew, too  
>  **Lee:** But yeah  
>  **Lee:**...    
>  **Lee:** It wasn’t the right move for me to come out  
>  **Lee:** but I’m sorry you had to put up with it  
> 
> **The Ex:** It’s fine.  
>  **The Ex:** Thank you for the apology, though.  
>  **The Ex:** …  
>  **The Ex:  
>  ** **The Ex:**...  
>  **The Ex:** If he hasn’t told anyone, how did you find out? 
> 
> **Lee:** Well  
>  **Lee:** I was there when he had an emotional breakdown  
>  **Lee:** That’s not even an exaggeration  
>  **Lee:** There was sobbing  
>  **Lee:** It was awful 
> 
> **The Ex:** Shit.  
>  **The Ex:** Is he ok?
> 
> **Lee:**...  
>  **Lee:  
>  ****Lee:**...  
>  **Lee:** He will be

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter. *sighs*
> 
> I had a lot of trouble with this chapter being too talky, and definitely too re-hash-y. I must have read it over six or seven times, trying to get the rehashing down... The problem is, while MCU is a pretty big fandom (especially with Civil War coming out all over, right now), the Blood-Smoke series isn't, and I felt that a bit of recapping was in order for those not familiar with the latter. (Plus, y'know, STEVE hasn't read the books.) 
> 
> On the other hand, too much is really annoying. I tried to hit that happy medium where those who had read it would know what I was referring to, and those who had not would be able to say, "Oh, that's gotta be a reference to the second fandom" and let it go. I could REALLY use feedback on this: how'd it go? Did it work right, badly? Anyway I could have done it better?
> 
> On a completely unrelated note, this was the chapter where a throwaway line made me realize _No wait, Steve_ would _have known Latin! He was Catholic!_ And then I remembered a certain scene from IM:2. You know who _else_ speaks Latin? 
> 
> I will probably write that fic. Like, separately, though. It doesn't belong in here.
> 
> Then I thought, "Wait, what if I have Steve meet HENRY? They can be all pre-Vatican II at each other!" And THEN I thought, "Wait, what if Steve ALREADY HAS met Henry?" And then my brain dribbled out my ears.


	7. Isaac (Lieutenant Greeley)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which much time passes, and many things happened.

  
  


**November:**

 

“What do you mean, ‘since we’re off next week’?”  Lee frowned over at Isaac, confused, and Isaac blinked back, just as confused, until he remembered that Lee was Canadian.

“Thanksgiving,” he explained.  “Typically a three-day holiday right before Black Friday?”

“Oh.  I forgot you Americans were  _ crazy people _ who did that Black Friday thing.”  Lee made a face like he was stumped.  “Well, now what am I going to do for the next week?”

“You mean, with all this unexpected free time?”  Isaac looked at Lee thoughtfully.  “Well, do you  _ want  _ a few days on your own to do nothing and not interact with anyone?”

“No,” Lee denied.  “Absolutely not.”

“It’s a bit late to be getting plane tickets back to Canada,” Isaac noted.  “But I’m renting a car for a week and driving home; want to come visit the tricuspid valve of the heartland with me?’

 

  
Isaac introduced Lee to his family with, “Everyone, this is my dumbass co-star who didn’t realize this week was Thanksgiving.”  

Isaac’s sisters thought Lee was  _ great.   _

  
  


 

**December:**

 

Isaac and Lee went in together on a present for Captain America.  They got him a carton of Camel Turkish Golds, two lighters, a pair of silver-rimmed, wire-frame spectacles with no prescription in the glass, pre-paid appointments with Isaac’s hair dresser for the next six months and two bottles of product, and a pair of jeans and three of the tight t-shirts Isaac had wore in his day-to-day activities.  

Then Isaac signed up for two acting classes, emailing the teachers to explain that he wouldn’t be able to attend regularly, but since he had a steady acting role already, he was really only taking classes because he was interested, and could they grade them pass-fail, please?

Steve couldn’t stop grinning when they explained it to him.  "They probably still won't have me do undercover work," he pointed out.

Lee snorted.  "Steve.  If I wanted to give you  _job_ a Christmas present, there are better things to get them."

  
  
  
  


**February:**

 

“Ask her out.”

“Jesus,  _ no!”  _

“Isaac.  You have gone in against gun runners in the middle of a thunderstorm on a boat with a hole in the hull.”

_ “How did you know that?” _

“Clint told me.”

“How did  _ he  _ know that?”

_ “The point is,  _ you’re a grown man with a ballsack bigger than most people’s heads.  Ask her out.”

Isaac sighed.  “And what if she says no?” he asked.  “This show is scheduled to run for five seasons, you think the next four are going to be pleasant if we’re dancing around the awkward the whole time?”

Green eyes rolled expressively.  

“First of all:  it’s not going to be awkward the whole time.  Even if she says no,  _ which she won’t,  _ I give you a month, maybe two, and then you’ll be back to your normal, goofball selves around each other.  Second of all:  that statement is qualified by the fact that your normal, goofball selves  _ are themselves  _ kind of awkward around each other.”

Well, that was true.  Isaac and Jodie were stupid for each other, and everybody knew it.

“Third, and this may be bad news, I’m not sure:  You’ll be seeing a lot less of her next season.”

“What?  Why?”

“I overheard Nate and Adam -” One of the directors. “- talking about it; apparently, she’s impressed the hell out of them, and they’re promoting her to APOC next season.”

“Oh.”  Isaac swallowed, heavily, against the sting in his throat.  “That’s…  that’s fantastic.  Good for her.”  He frowned.  “Wait, who’s our APOC now?”

“We don’t have one.”  Lee shrugged.  “It’s a bigger production than anticipated, so we could use one, and it’s a great step for her, but they probably won’t give her much of a raise.”  He watched Isaac steadily.  “I mean, you’ll still  _ see  _ her, she’s not  _ vanishing…” _

Isaac nodded.  “No, I know.  Still.”

“Yeah.”

Isaac  squared his shoulders, the familiar posture reminding him,, once again, that there was a part of him that was brave.  “Alright.  I’ll ask her out.  If it goes wrong, blow something up for a distraction, will you?”

  
  
  


It didn’t go badly, actually.  She turned him down for Valentine’s, but accepted for the wrap party.  

Isaac basically floated home.

  
  
  
  


**March:**

_Captain America stared at the monolithic face of the HYRDA facility, calculating the odds of four men getting in, rescuing three more, and getting all of them out again.  His brilliant strategic mind whirled, considered their resources, generating and rejecting plans._

(Isaac had started to think of this as the  _If I Only Had a Wheelbarrow_ look.)

_Slowly, his eyes tracked across his people.  His right-hand man, Bucky, nodded, blue eyes resolute; Gabe, as always a pool of calm in the face of danger, gave the thin smile he wore when facing the steepest odds; Dernier crossed his arms, waiting for the plan they all knew was coming._

_Like a man choosing a suit from a collection of good suits, the Captain nodded at that last.  "Jacques," he asked.  "How many explosives do we still have?"_

“And CUT!  That’s a wrap, people!  I’ll see you all in August!”  

A ragged cheer went up, and Lee turned to Elise from costuming, who had come up to him for his contact lenses.  Over the last six months, the contacts had started seriously irritating Lee’s eyes, and the first thing he did when he got the chance was to take them out.  

Isaac reached out and slugged Lee on the shoulder.  When Lee looked over, Isaac lifted his eyebrows and grinned. 

Lee grinned back, dodging Mo, who was dancing all over the stage like the maniacal, caffeinated pixie he was.  “Hey,” said Lee, slinging an arm around Isaac shoulders.

Isaac shrugged him off.  “Please keep your hands to yourself,” he said, as disparagingly as he could around the shit-eating rictus.  

“No, I’m too happy.  Sooo…”  Lee grinned him.

“Oh my  _ God,  _ what do you  _ want?” _

“Ride home,” Lee answered promptly, as Elise came back for his boots.  (Lee had worn the boots into the mud  _ once.   _ That, it turned out, had been enough, and ever since, they were confiscated before Lee was allowed to leave set.) “And then to the Pizza Night at the Tower.”

Pizza Night tonight was supposed to be Tacos; despite the changing menu, the name had stuck, and it usually drew a pretty good crowd, assuming the world wasn’t ending either literally or metaphorically.  Since they’d run through the end of  _ Darkest Night  _ last month, they had moved on to films, although so far, they had stuck with the “trashy vampire” theme which, as Darcy had pointed out, was pretty much an “any vampires” theme.  Tonight was  _ Interview, _ and Isaac was hoping to be quietly in LA, working his bit part in a rom com, by the time they hit  _ Twilight _ .

“It  _ is  _ pissing rain,” Isaac acknowledged.  “Probably not good on the bike.  Am I supposed to wait for you while you change at your place?”  It wouldn’t really be a problem; Lee’s place was pretty nice.  

(There was an X-Box.  Isaac, who had a PC and a PS4, but not an X-Box, had taken the opportunity to sample the X-Box Live Arcade the last time he came over.)

“You’re supposed to drive around the block while I pick up the beer I promised to bring,” snorted Lee, “And then I can wait for you, at  _ your  _ place, while  _ you  _ change.”

Isaac nodded.  “Meet me in the Actor’s Lounge, and we’ll head down to the car together,” he agreed.

  
  
  
  


Isaac’s car was a hunter green 1998 Civic, which coughed and sputtered when he started it up, and smelled like wet cat (subsequent to the transportation of  _ actual  _ wet cats during the incident in which he’d acquired Habanero and Ghost Kitty), and made a squeaking sound when he turned the wheel too far to the left.  It still ran, though, in spite of everything, and Isaac kept taking it in for regular checkups, so it would probably continue to run for another three years. 

A phone chimed the opening bars of the  _ Darkest Night _ theme as Isaac left the garage, and he looked over to see Lee reveal a text from his ex that read simply, “ENTS”.  And then another, as Lee choked on his own laughter:  “FUCK NO”.

Isaac had long ago concluded that Lee’s ex was a very strange woman.  

“So,” Isaac asked, “You have big plans for the hiatus?”

“Eh, some,” answered Lee.  “Voiceover work on a video game.  Private developer, based here in New York, I get to be a first-person detective investigating paranormal activity.  The pay is mediocre, but I can come in to record basically whenever I want, and it should be good for stretching my acting chops.”

“Wait, FPS paranormal detective...   _ Elemental?   _ That video game?”

“Yeah!  You’ve heard of it?”  

Isaac dappled his fingers over the steering wheel as he pulled up to a red light.  “Yeah, I’m actually one of the Kickstarter backers.  I spent, like, half my first paycheck on that thing.”  Isaac grinned at the road ahead of him as the light turned green, and he slowly accelerated again.  “I’m actually paying part of your -”

The word  _ salary  _ was cut off as a black SUV slammed into them, pushing the little green Honda through the intersection and toward the side of the road.  Lee and Isaac stared at each other in stupefied rage at the collision, but Isaac’s eyes widened as he saw, through the passenger-side window, two kevlar-clad figures with guns approach the car.

  
  
  
  


Isaac and Lee looked around them as the door to the tiny room slammed shut behind them.  

“Is it weird that I kind of wish this were a prison?” Isaac asked.

“It  _ is  _ a prison,” pointed out Lee, “Functionally, anyway.”

“Yeah, but where are the iron bars?  Where is the dank and dripping lichen-filled dungeon?  Where are the patrolling guards?”

“We might have that last one,” Lee comforted him.  “In fact, I would say, probably.”

“Well, there were security cameras in the hallways,” Isaac grudgingly admitted.  He looked around the little room again.

It was a conference room; that was probably the most obvious, and depressing, thing.  Functionally a prison or not, they had clearly been brought, not to a fortress, but to an abandoned office building, and they were being held prisoner in a room previously used to discuss quarterly earnings.  The door was locked - they had both clearly seen the deadbolt on the other side before they were shoved in - but the lock had been added after the fact, being of a significantly different style than the rest of the hallway.  The chairs had the sort of modern patterning designed to disguise dirt, and they did not match the carpet.

“You would expect kidnappers to be a little more intimidating,” he bitched.

“I’m really okay with this,” said Lee, who did in fact look convincingly unbothered by their circumstances.

“What the fuck, Lee,” Isaac sighed.  “Is this not your first kidnapping or something?”

Lee barked a laugh.  “It’s  _ not,  _ actually.  It’s my  _ third.”   _

Isaac choked.  “You’re kidding.  You -”  

He broke off, snorting, and Lee actually laughed, albeit somewhat hysterically.  Then he shrugged.  “Experience isn't very helpful here, I'm afraid.  I can’t actually call anyone for help, since they took our phones.  And since he’s in Vancouver right now…”  Lee hoisted himself up onto the conference table, looking uncomfortable.  “...I really doubt we’re going to rescued by my ex-boyfriend.  Which is how the previous kidnappings ended.”

“Oh.”  Isaac sucked at his lower lip as he joined Lee, feet kicking as he sat on the edge of the table, and decided to ignore the ‘boyfriend’ thing.  “Why were you kidnapped before?” he asked instead.  “Is it relevant?”

“I doubt it,” answered Lee.  “This situation has pretty significant stylistic differences.”

“Like the fact that this kidnapping involves motivational posters on the wall?”

“Like the fact that there's more than one kidnapper, and they have guns and tactical vests,” corrected Lee.  “The inappropriate setting is the only part that feels familiar, actually.”  He sighed.  “I’m pretty sure this is more related to who we’re friends with  _ now _ , anyway,” he added, staring at a picture of a canoe bearing the caption,  _ DESTINY:  Life is a journey, not a destination.   _ "You know, I fail to understand how the image is related the caption," he bitched.  

“The general level of militarism and funding  _ do  _ point to our acquaintance with the Avengers for motive,” Isaac agreed, ignoring the rest of it.  “But why us?  It’s not like we have useful intel; we don’t even live with the Avengers."

He paused, and Lee grinned, filling in the joke they were both thinking:  "And since Darcy and I broke up, we don't sleep with them, either."

Isaac sighed.  "Yes, _thank you,_ Lee.  Someone like Jane, or, okay, Darcy, would make a better target.”

“And did they intend to get  _ us  _ at all?  Or just you?  Were they watching for the day you gave me a ride, or did they get the BOGO special?”  Lee frowned.  “It can’t be related to your military service, can it?”

Isaac shook his head.  “My time in the Coast Guard was interesting, but not exceptionally so,” he answered.  Then made a disgusted noise of frustration.  “Do you mind if I smoke?” he asked plaintively.

“Be my guest,” Lee answered.  “Just remember, that may be the last pack of Camels you get, so maybe ration them out a little.”

“Running out of smokes would be the worst part of being kidnapped,” Isaac snarked, “but on the other hand, if I still have some left when I die, I’m definitely blaming you.”  He sucked air through the cig as he held it to the flame, then sighed.  “We’re better off if we assume they intended to kidnap at the very least me, and probably both of us.”  

Isaac hesitated, but Lee was tough and this situation was not going to get better if he pussyfooted around these things.  “If they didn’t intend to take you,” he continued apologetically, “they could have killed you back at the car wreck.  Either they were waiting until that opportunity to get us together, or they went to take one of us and decided on the spot that two was preferable.”

“But if it was one of us, which one was the target?”

“I’m a little more focused on how we get out of here,” argued Isaac.  He took a long inhale, then waved the cigarette at a picture of a lake that declared that  _ VISION  _ was _ the ability to see what is invisible to others _ as he refocused.  “Look, what do we have?  A lighter, six cigarettes…  Our wallets?” He looked a question at Lee at that last one, and Lee checked his pocket and nodded.  “Alright.  ID’s, credit cards, we can open a door…”

Lee shook his head.  “Not a deadbolt,” he pointed out, and Isaac remembered that was what the new lock on their current room-slash-cell had been.  

“A little money,” he continued anyway.  “Anything else?”

“Uh.”  Lee looked uncomfortable again.  “I keep a... good-luck token in my wallet.”

“Okay,” said Isaac blankly, not seeing how this was significant.  He took a draw of his cig.  “I’ve got two pictures of my cats,” he offered.

“Really?”  Lee considered keeping a good-luck token on him to be sensible, but thought Isaac's pictures of his cats merited sarcasm.   _Okay, jerk-off,_ _I see how it is._

_“And_ one of my family,” Isaac added defensively.  Then shook his head.  “Look, one step at a time.  First things first:  how do we get out of this room?”

Lee shrugged.  “Can we trick them into letting us out?  What would do that, the need for medical attention?”

“Maybe.”  Isaac glared at a picture of the sun setting behind a mountain, captioned,  _ CUSTOM: You can customize the text of your message here. _  “Or some kind of threat in the room with us?”  

He took another, deeper drag off his cigarette, and the smoke alarm went off.

  
  
  
  


The good news was, they got moved out of their prison/conference room.  The bad news was, they got hauled down three hallways into  _ another  _ conference room, this one with all the chairs moved into stacks at the sides.  In the middle of the room, two pasty-looking young women, most likely in their early twenties, looked seriously at each other from behind their glasses while hunched over a card table  _ covered  _ in papers, along with, bizarrely, candles, books, and chalk.  

“Oh, damn,” said the blonde one, looking and sounding wet:  limp, straight hairstyle, watery, pale blue eyes, a thick but pallid-sounding voice, and sweat at the edges of her hairline.  “Maybe put them over there?”  She waved at the detritus of chairs in the farthest corner from the door.  

“We’re not  _ ready  _ for them yet, why did you even  _ bring them in here, _ ” snapped the redhead in a New York accent that could cut glass.  

“We couldn’t leave them in a prison cell that’s on  _ fire,”  _ explained one of their guards ( _ black, 6’4”, approximately 230 lbs, surprisingly high-pitched voice, _ noted Isaac), sounding affronted.  

The redhead rolled her eyes.

“The room wasn’t on  _ fire,  _ they were probably just having a cigarette,” she said scathingly.

“Actually,” began Lee, who had had the idea to set fire to one of the polyester chair seats when the alarm sounded.  It had gone up gratifyingly quickly, and Isaac had been a little concerned about  _ actually  _ getting burned by the time the guards had opened the door.

“Shut up,” Red cut Lee off.  “I am not interested in hearing from the  _ spare,  _ why did they even  _ bring you.”   _ She had yet, Isaac noticed, to actually ask a question like a question.

Although that did solve the puzzle of which of them had been the target of the kidnapping.

_ Yay. _

“I thought -” started the guard.

“You?” she broke in.  “Thought?  Seriously.  Just put them over there.”

Her directive indicated the same chairs the blonde had, and was obeyed significantly more quickly.  

“Tell you what,” said Lee quietly as the guard was settling them into the aforementioned chairs, this time cuffing their hands behind the arched-metal backs, “If you switch sides and start working for us, I promise never to speak to you that way.”

The guard snorted.  “I’ll think about it,” he said sourly, but cuffed them securely regardless as the other guard left the room, so Isaac figured he wasn’t thinking about it too hard.  

Lee shifted in his chair, turning to face Isaac as well as he could.  “So, Isaac,” he began, but Red cut him off.

_ “No talking!” _

  
  
  


A couple hours later, Droopy looked up at Red and said, “We should test it one more time.”

“Oh,” said Red, “My God.  How many hobos do you think we can kidnap for this!”

“It’s New York, so, infinite,” snipped Droopy in a surprising display of spine, “But as it happens…”  She nodded pointedly at Lee.  

Oh.  This was not good.

Red grabbed the chalk off the table, checking her phone before starting to draw on the carpet.  

“Okay,” muttered Lee as the guards started in their direction.  _  “Now _ this is starting to resemble my previous kidnappings.”

“A little late,” Isaac snapped  _ sotto voce,  _ then added more loudly.  “Hey!  I don’t suppose you’d be willing to tell us what you’re doing?”

“Why,” Red rolled her eyes.

Droopy put one moist-looking hand on Red’s arm.  “If it kills him,” she said softly, “he deserves to know why, Monette.”

Oh,  _ shit,  _ that was  _ not a good sign. _

Red (Monette?) rolled her eyes again,  _ (Seriously, she’s going to sprain those if she isn’t careful, _ he thought) then said, “We’re trying to get confidential information out of Captain America.”

“Uh.”  Isaac felt his eyes widen.  “You, uh…  You do know I’m not  _ actually -”   _

“The real Captain America wouldn’t be held by simple cuffs,” jumped in Droopy.  “In fact, he wouldn’t be held by  _ anything  _ we have the resources to make, which is why we’re trying to pull the information directly from his head into the mind of someone we  _ can  _ control.”

Isaac blinked.  “That… actually makes sense.  Kind of.  But how…?”

“Magic,” said Monette sharply.

Droopy nodded behind her.  

“So…”  Isaac paused, then started again.  “Sooo, magic’s not real,” he began.

Droopy stopped nodding.

“We’ve done this dozens of times,” she said flatly.  “It’s never worked correctly, but it’s always done  _ something _ .  The magic is real.”

Isaac shook his head.  “No,” he said confidently.  Maybe he could talk them out this, whatever it was...

“Oh, my god!  Do you really think we’d have wasted resources on kidnapping a third-rate celebrity if we didn’t have reason to believe it would work!  Magic is real!”

“Hey!” he said.   _ “Third rate?”   _

_ Maybe focus on the point, Greeley?!  _ his inner drill sergeant snapped.

_ “ _ Plus,” he continued hastily, “There’s no way.  Every double-blind study -”

“Isaac.”  This time, it was Lee who spoke, voice tense beside him.  Isaac looked over, and met his gaze.  There was no doubt or uncertainty in his green eyes.  He said, with plain conviction, “Magic is real.”

Isaac, a sinking feeling in his stomach, believed him.

Lee saw it, nodded.  Broke his gaze.  

Looked back at the Cheerleaders from Hell.  “What,” he asked, “did you mean by, ‘it’s never worked correctly’?”

“The test hobos -” started Droopy.

“Test  _ subjects,  _ Claudia,  _ Jesus.” _

“The  _ test subjects  _ we’ve worked with previously all had migraines, cerebral hemorrhages, and death, in that order,” Droopy clarified.   _ “But, _ we’ve figured out a way to work around that.  Basically, it’s from overloading the synaptic restructuring, so if we don’t put as much power into it…”

“Choke up on the spell,” murmured Lee, sounding weirdly on-board with this explanation.

“Right.  Choke up on it…  That, combined with increased Confluence of Identity, means we should be able to get the information out of you before the pain puts you under.”

Lee nodded.  “Okay,” he started, “I see some problems with this.”

“No one cares,” said Monette, dragging some stacks chairs over to surround her drawing.  “Put him in the pentagram,” she ordered Tall, Dark and Soprano, who picked Lee up by his cuffed arms (“Ow!” yelled Lee), dropped him in the center of the chalk marks (which, okay, did actually look like a pentagram, now that Isaac was paying attention, although they’d have looked more like one if not drawn on early-90’s-era carpeting), and sat on him while he re-cuffed Lee’s arms into a spread-eagle position, hooking the restraints to the legs of the stacked chairs on each side.  

“You know, I feel that if I’m going to have migraine and hemorrhage, I don’t have too much impetus to keep quiet,” Lee shouted breathily, clearly having trouble getting enough air due to the 230 pounds  _ (approximately) _ of guard on his chest.  

Isaac took the opportunity of the distraction to start wriggling his way up the chair back, then slipped his arms down beside him, taking his seat again.  

“For one thing,” Lee continued, “how will you make me talk once I’ve got Captain America’s memories in me?”

“The migraines,” answered Droopy (Claudia?).  “We’ve got Percocet.  You talk, you get surcease.”

“Okay, assuming that works - ow!  Damnit!”  Lee glared up at Monette, who had kicked him.  “If you damage me into unconsciousness,” he informed her, “you won’t be able to get information from me once you’ve done the spell.”

Claudia put a hand on Monette’s arm.  “What do you want to say?” she asked Lee.  “Make it fast.”

“What’s Confluence of Identity?” he bit out.

“It’s why we’ve got you two instead of hobos,” she told him.  “You play these characters for that show, so your brains are more like the targets’ than a random stranger would be.  When we were using the test hobos -”

_ “Test.  Subjects.  Jesus, Claudia!” _

“- it worked better when we tried to get information from the brains of famous homeless people, or vets, in some cases, instead.  The more similar the subject is to the target, the more effective the spell, the less damage - hopefully - the spell does.”

Lee breathed in and out, as Monette tossed the guard more cuffs  _ (how many sets of cuffs did these people have?)  _ to secure his feet, then spoke again.  “You said, ‘these characters’.  You’re not trying for Captain America with me?”

Claudia blinked at him.  “How can we test the effects of Confluence of Identity on you, if you don’t  _ have  _ Confluence of Identity with the subject?”  She shook her head.  “No.  With you, we’re trying for Barnes.”

  
  
  
  


Isaac leaned back a little in the chair, easing the ache in his shoulders, as the two women paced around Lee.  They’d placed candles at each of his shoulders, armpits, and hips, and, worryingly, one at the junction of his spread legs, cautioning him, “The guy who knocked a candle over in the middle of this took  _ hours  _ to die screaming.  Don’t move.”  

Then they’d conferred over pronunciation for a minute.  Apparently, ‘choking up on the spell’ involved changing the words a bit.  

Then they’d started chanting.  

The actual invocation didn’t last very long - a minute, tops - and then they’d walked around Lee in opposite directions, passing each other at his head and again where his feet would be, if they weren’t splayed like…  Well.  

There were a lot of women on the internet who would have paid good money to see this.   _ Especially _ _ on Tumblr... _

Every time the women passed each other, one of them would say, “Lee Nicholas!” and the other would respond “James Buchanan Barnes!” in what sounded like the strangest Secret Society code-words, ever.  

_ Although, still better than “swordfish.” _

Isaac hoped like hell that all this was sufficiently distracting, and shuffled off of his chair.

The thing was, Isaac spent  _ at least  _ an hour,  _ every day,  _ in the gym, and that could really do a number on a guy if he wasn’t careful.  Isaac had no intention of waking up in his thirties with arthritis - it sounded like a bad time - and so Isaac  _ also  _ spent at least an hour every day doing yoga.  

He was, as a result,  _ a lot  _ more flexible than anyone would reasonably expect a man his size to be.

The cuffs slipped past the soles of his shoes, and Isaac returned to the chair again, resting his hands against his belly, propping one ankle on the opposing knee in a pose he’d copied from Steve.  His hands thus hidden, his pulled his shoulders back in a parade-rest-ish imitation of how he’d looked with the cuffs behind the chair.  

The women stopped pacing.

The candles  _ flared.   _

Their flames, which had been little things, like the kind he had seen on tea-lights, suddenly arched, forming loops over the join of groin and thigh on each of Lee’s legs, over each of his arms at the shoulder, and over his neck.  Lee gave a little cry when that last one got too close and burned him, and Isaac made an abortive gesture at sitting up.

The thing was,  _ apparently -  _ and he still couldn’t quite  _ believe  _ this,  _ what was his life,  _ seriously - apparently, magic was real.  And if he interrupted this -  _ ugh  _ \- ritual, what would happen to Lee?  

The phrase “took hours to die screaming” lingering in his mind, Isaac sat back down.  

The candle flames blazed brighter and brighter, then, abruptly, went out, starting at the wicks and vanishing up their course, the same way a flame went out on a lighter.  

Lee panted on the ground with his eyes closed.  

Then with one eye closed, as he opened the other.  

“Was that it?” he asked.

The women stared at him.  “Do you not feel  _ pain?”  _ Monette snarled.

He looked from one to the other, flexing his arms against the cuffs.  “Noooot especially, no,” he answered.  “Sorry.  Kind of a headache, maybe?”

Isaac jumped the guard.

  
  
  
  


Five minutes later, Lee was loose, the women were unconscious and cuffed to the stacked chairs, and Tall, Dark, and Surprisingly Heavy When Unconscious was cuffed with the remaining three sets of cuffs connecting his wrists, his ankles, and then the chain between his wrists to the chain at his ankles.

_ Really, so helpful of them to provide multiple sets of handcuffs…  _

“Okay,” said Isaac, checking over how many bullets were in the guard’s gun (six rounds remaining).  “We have to get out of here, and we know there are more guards in the corridor.”

Lee nodded.  “But not too close in the corridor, because they’d have heard the ruckus,” he said.  “Let’s hit the door on the count of three; you go right, because that’s the direction they brought us from and there’s more likely to be extra guards there.”

Isaac blinked.  “That… sounds exactly like what I was planning,” he agreed, a little weirded out, then shook it off and continued.  “If they’re close enough to jump, we’ll do it, but if not -”

“We’ll duck back inside the room, and use the door as a choke-point to cut down their effective range,” agreed Lee.  

“ _ Seriously _ ,” asked Isaac, “How many times have you done this before?!”

“Self-rescued?”  Lee grinned at him.  “Actually, none.  It’s doing wonders for my self-esteem, though.”  He turned, walked over to the card table with all the papers on it.  He sorted through them, then picked a few up, folding them in half - they didn’t fold smoothly, looking thick like vellum or something - and tucking them inside his shirt, then took off his jacket and tied it around his waist with - was that a Zeppelin bend knot? - to pin them in place.  “These should not stay here,” he explained to Isaac, who supposed that was a good point, if those papers were instructions on how to cause strokes in other people.  Using  _ magic. _

_ Good grief. _

“Ready?” Isaac asked.

“Let’s go.”

They hit the door at the same time, Isaac fanning right as planned.  Lee snapped out a terse, “I’m clear,” and Isaac fired four of the six bullets he had left, because he’d been trained to shoot for center mass and always double-tap, and now was not the time to try to overcome his training.  The two guards - twenty feet away, and turning to face them as he’d fired - dropped, and Isaac had a moment of satisfaction at good aim, right on target, good job…

...and then remembered that those were two  _ people  _ he’d just shot.

_ Oh, right,  _ he thought,  _ so that’s why I left the military.  I knew there was a reason... _

Lee pressed forward beside him, kneeling between the two downed guardsmen.

“Both out,” he reported.  “One still alive -” He jerked his head at the one to his right, then started disarming both guards, checking the chamber and magazine briskly on each gun, then storing one (safety on) under the back of his belt, the other gripped professionally (safety off) in front of him.

Then he froze.

“Lee?”

Isaac came abreast of him just in time to see Lee’s eyes widen in alarm and horror.  He met his eyes.  

“I’ve never touched a gun before in my life,” Lee said palely.  

Isaac put on his most confident voice.  "Not true," he said.

Lee frowned, the realized what Isaac meant and amended, “Not a real one, I mean.  Just props for the show.”

Isaac looked at Lee’s hands, steady on the semiautomatic, index finger carefully away from the trigger.  “Well,” he said, “You have some hella good instincts.”   Lee looked ready to object to his nonchalance, when Isaac added, “How’s your head?”

“It hurts,” Lee answered, scowling.  “Although not cerebral hemorrhage levels of pain.”

“Those women said they choked up on it.  Could they have choked up so much you only got muscle memories?”

“Maybe?” Lee hazarded, then looked back down at his hands.  “Or maybe it’s because Barnes is dead?”  

“I’m not sure it matters right now.  As long as it's not killing you, that's what matters for now.”  But Isaac wasn't sure he'd gotten all the worry out of his voice.

Lee nodded.  “Okay,” he said shakily.  “Let’s get out of here.”

Isaac put a hand on his arm.  “Lee,” he said.  “If you’ve never touched a gun before, I’m pretty sure you’ve never shot someone.”

Lee shook his head.  

“Then give me the gun.”

Lee frowned.  “What if we each need a gun to get out of here?” he asked.  “Say, if there’s more guards?”

“Well, for one thing, you’ll still have the  _ other  _ gun, the one you holstered… if you can call that a holster, seriously, ‘better men than you have lost a buttock’,” Isaac quoted.  Lee took one hand off the semi he was holding, and Isaac stopped him,   “No, don’t draw it,  just keep it there.  

“For another thing, this gun only has two bullets left in it, because the guard we chained up was a  _ giant slacker,  _ so you should give me the gun with a decent magazine.”  

Lee reluctantly handed over the pistol.  

“For a third,” Isaac told him softly, “If you’ve never taken another human life, now is not a good time to start.”

He didn’t look down at the guards he’d shot.  

Didn’t have to.

“Let’s go,” said Lee, leaving the second gun tucked into his waistband.

  
  
  
  


They did not, counter to expectation, encounter any more guards, at least until they got to the lobby.  There, they found - bizarrely - a security station, with a guard in a different uniform half asleep at it.  

Isaac paused.  “Do you think he knows what they do here?” he asked Lee.

“Well, the three guards we saw before seemed to be personal guards, hired by the Hell Twins, and this guy looks like standard security, so… No?”

Isaac put the safety on his weapon, tucked it into a potted plant as Lee watched, befuddled, then strode up to the guard station.  

“Hello,” he said briskly.  “My friend and I, here, have lost our cell phones.  Can you tell me where they would have been turned in, if found?”

“Right here,” said the guard, who wore a name tag saying  _ Ron _ .  “Take a look.”  

_ It can’t be this easy,  _ Isaac thought.

But it was.

Ron pulled out a basket containing scarves, sunglasses, readers, endless wallets, and, yes, their cell phones.  Isaac and Lee reached in to pull them out.  “Wait a minute, son,” said Ron.  

They both froze.  

“Can you provide some proof that those phones are yours?”

Lee relaxed beside him.  “Sure,” he said, “my last texts from my Ex were about Ents.”  Then he unlocked the phone, showing the texts, which had been joined by one reading only  _ FML,  _ to the guard.

“What the hell is an Ent?” asked Ron.

“The things from  _ Lord of the Rings?   _ The tree things?”

“I ain’t going to see a movie that’s three and half damn hours long,” the guard said, looking at them as if they were crazy.

“Yeah, the overdrawn length was really a weakness of those films -” Lee started, and Isaac cut in.

“I have two cats on my unlock screen.”  He showed Habanero and Ghost Kitty to Ron, smiling his _I'm on TV!_ smile.

“Good enough,” shrugged Ron.  “Have a good one.”

They exited the building in silence, and then Lee said, “Let’s get away from here, at least six blocks, before we call Steve.”

Isaac nodded.  

He eventually made the call from a deli, while Lee ordered them both sandwiches.

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes!  
> 1) To all those who wished for Henry to have known Steve: Your wish is granted. I have the first chapter drafted, and it's only going to be three chapters long, so I should have a draft for the whole thing done some time this week. It will not be in continuity with this fic, but it will be close, because my headcanon is a shiny, beautiful place. It's, uh... Wow, it's a lot darker than this fic is.
> 
> 2) I've finished the draft for this fic, and it's a) a chapter longer than anticipated and b) not nearly as sexy as planned. 
> 
> 3) It was not until I wrote that Habanero and Ghost Kitty had been wet when Isaac got them that I realized that he rescued them from a sack in a river. Oh, Isaac, you hero. *blows him kisses*
> 
> 4) I decided to preempt the time delay, having Red and Droopy pick up the boys right after filming on the grounds that a) that's when their brains would be 'freshest' and b) it was simpler than the other fixes. In case you were wondering how I worked that one out.


	8. Lee

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the boys go back to the tower, and everyone worries excessively.

Captain America was not amused.  

It turned out, when Captain America was not amused, Lee and Isaac got to debrief in front of the entirety of the Avengers (and assembled personnel) at Pizza Night.

 _“Isaac Greeley,_ you _son of a bitch,_ you could have _died!  And then who would I have sex with?!!”_

 _“Jesus,_ Jodie!  We haven't had sex _yet!”_

It was not going well.

 

“So how did you escape?”  

“Isaac’s a badass,” Lee answered succinctly, adding, “He jumped the guard in the room and tazed him with _his own tazer,_ then hit the Hell Twins in their faces until they went down.”

“Yep, hittin’ girls, that’s my specialty,” Isaac said wryly.  He had, unusually for him, hit up Tony Stark’s bourbon almost as soon as he arrived, and was now distinctly buzzed.  It left him tired-looking, a little more relaxed, and a lot more Country-sounding than Lee had previously seen him.

“Then he shot the guards in the hallway, and we left the building.”

“Ron gave us our phones back,” Isaac reminded him.

Steve looked at Natasha and Clint.  “Are you getting this?” he asked them ominously.

“Oh, I’m getting a few things,” said Natasha.  Lee remembered suddenly that she used to scare him just by existing, and wondered what had changed.  “I’m getting that there are an unknown number of dead bodies, and up to three prisoners, at the building where they were held…”

“It said ‘Komstadt Solutions’ on the sign in front of the building,” Lee supplied helpfully. 

“Thank you.   _And_ I’m getting that, with the time delay, up to three of the prisoners may have escaped by now.”

“Probably not Dudley,” Lee argued reasonably.  “We chained him up pretty well.”

“You chained him to a stack of chairs, I think it’s possible that he’s escaped,” she told him pityingly.

Isaac looked up.  “His name was Dudley?”

“Not that I know of, but I had to call him _something.”_

“Clint,” Steve summoned, and Clint nodded.  

“C’mon, Kate,” he said, and they left the room without even a token protest over missing the tacos.  That was when Lee started to realize that their kidnapping may have been more serious than the ineptitude made it seem.

Jodie, apparently unable to stand it anymore, climbed into Isaac’s lap, clinging like a monkey as Tony instructed JARVIS to find everything he could on Komstadt solutions.

“I’m concerned about this _magic_ you described,” said Steve - No, said Captain America, that was _definitely_ Captain America talking, and Lee was beginning to realize that the Captain Voice they had seen before was _nothing_ when compared to the full-out version he was pulling out now.  Lee could almost  _feel_ the Captain Voice, tugging at him.

“I am, too,” Lee admitted, then qualified, “Although probably not for the same reasons you are.”

“The words _cerebral hemorrhage_ and _death_ were mentioned,” Bruce cut in.  “At the very least we’re getting you an fMRI.  Tony’s actually made a helmet that does it, because he can’t do the usual ones in the hospital - well, couldn’t, I suppose he can now - so you wouldn’t even have to leave the tower.”

“That’s fine,” Lee agreed.  “Unlike some people, I am not stupidly resistant to accepting medical treatment.”

“Who is he talking about?  Clint’s already gone,” said Tony, and Lee let the rest of the room think he’d meant Tony Stark, because he’d actually meant Tony Foster.

“You said not for that reason," Natasha reminded him, eyes narrowed.  "So why _were_ you worried about the magic?”

Lee sighed, and pulled the jumbled parchment sheets he’d secured under his jacket out, smoothing them down.  “Do you have a box for this?” he asked, and Darcy brought over…  Huh, the taco box.  

“Hold on,” she said, then lined it with foil.  “No use getting refried beans on your magic papers,” she joked weakly, and Lee smiled at her, letting it stretch across his face until it felt familiar again.  Behind him, someone sucked in a breath, sharply.

“No,” he agreed, “And the insulating properties of tin foil can’t hurt, either.”  He looked up at Natasha.  “I’ve encountered magic before,” he told Natasha.  “There was a…” He weighed the vocabulary words available, then went with the one Tony used with a wince.  “...wizard… on staff at _Darkest Night._  Not professionally a wizard, just an assistant director who _happened to be_ a wizard,” he clarified hastily, and at the words _assistant director,_ Steve’s head snapped up.  

Oh, good.  Now at least one Avenger knew Tony’s secret identity.   _Fantastic._

“Well, can you contact him?” asked Jodie.  “Because if you’ve got a guy who knows what’s going on magically, and you’re dealing with magic…”  She made an expansive gesture.

“Wait,” said Darcy, _“Is_ it a guy?  Maybe wizard is a non-gender-specific term, like _doctor_ or _actor.”_

“It is, actually,” Lee admitted, “But this wizard does happen to be a guy.”  He smiled weakly at her.

“Name,” demanded Tony, snapping his fingers at Lee.  “I’ll look up his number.”

“No,” said Lee sharply, and everyone looked at him.  “I have his number, and I will let him know about this.  But I’d rather not give you his name, because he’s always kept the wizard thing a secret, and I’m pretty sure telling _all of the Avengers_ about him would count as a betrayal!”

Tony opened his mouth to object, but Natasha cut him off.  “I can understand that,” she said pointedly, and Tony shot her a betrayed look.  She ignored it.  “But you haven’t answered the question.  Why were you worried about the use of magic, given your previous experience?”

Lee winced.  “My… wizard friend… He used to say, ‘Like draws to like.’  And here I am, having _left_ a situation where I was regularly exposed to the occult less than a year ago, and now…”

She nodded.  “You are in such a situation again.”  She quirked an eyebrow up and down.  "Possibly, like drawing to like."

“Plus, I was kind of a target in those situations,” Lee admitted.  “Apparently, I’m easier than usual to possess?”

“Because you’re an actor?” asked Jodie, curled up in Isaac’s oversized arms.

“What?”  Thrown, Lee looked over at her.  Mason Reed, his former costar, had also been a Frequent Flyer on the possession front, but Lee hadn’t thought that was related to their profession…

“Actors are taken over by the spirits of others _all the time,_ like, for their job; it’s just not usually literal,” Jodie pointed out.  “Maybe it’s, like, metaphysical lube, or something.”

“Huh.”  Lee thought about it, then snickered.  “In the sense that not only does the spirit go in easier, but it’s less likely to rip you up while it’s in there?”  He grinned at her, trying again to make sure it was wide and easy-going.  “That actually fits with my experience,” he admitted.  “To continue the metaphor, then,” he started, and Steve winced.

“Please,” he requested.  “Let’s not.”

“Awww,” said Darcy quietly.  

Steve pretended not to hear it.  “What I’m hearing you say is that, having been a target for this sort of thing previously, you are more likely to be a target again,” he summarized, and Lee indicated that that was, indeed, accurate.  “But I’m more worried about the immediate effects of what you’ve experienced,” he continued.  

“I feel _fine,”_ Lee insisted.  “I don’t have _any_ memories from Barnes’ life, and if I did, that would only be helpful to me, since I could incorporate them on set.”  He glared.  

Steve glared back.  “Well, for a guy with no memories from him, you’re doing a great job impersonating Bucky’s expressions!” he snapped, and it seemed for a moment like the whole room drew back.  Steve looked around, at Bruce and Natasha, Darcy and Isaac and Tony.  

He bit his lip for a second, then, with obvious conscious thought, released it again.  “For about one word in ten,” he said, “you’ve got Bucky’s intonations.  Especially just now, when you were making innuendo, which would've been Buck all over, really.  You've been smiling like him, too.”  He met Lee’s eyes.  “What other effects are there?”

Lee didn’t answer.

“The guns,” said Isaac.  

“Tattletale,” muttered Lee.

“He was handling the guards’ guns back at the facility as if he did it every weekend,” Isaac reported, “But he said he’d only ever held prop guns.  I’d bet if you get him down on a range, he’d be a decent shot, too.

“He’s also had some basic military-style strategy implanted, and he didn’t hesitate before cuffing the Cheerleaders from Hell, which means that he was familiar with handcuffs, too.  I don’t suppose that was recreational?”  Isaac lifted his eyebrows inquiringly, all _Lieutenant Greeley-_ ish.  The fact that he was petting Jodie’s head didn’t significantly detract from his authority.  

“Never thought I would be embarrassed to admit I _wasn’t_ into bondage,” Lee muttered.

“There are different kinds of memories,” Bruce mentioned.  “The memories you use to remember _how_ to do things - procedural memories - are stored in a different part of the brain from memories of events, or memories of facts.  So knowing the date of your birthday is different from remembering the taste of the cake, and that in turn is different from knowing how to tie off a balloon.

“It sounds like you mostly got balloons, no facts or experiences,” he continued.  “From what you described, it seems likely that was a result of curtailing the power of the spell.”   

It wasn’t really a question, but Lee shrugged one shoulder in answer anyway, looking sideways at Steve.

Steve scowled, so apparently he looked like Bucky doing it.

Lee scowled back.   _It was my facial expression first!_ “I also wondered…  I mean, they mentioned using vets or hobos in their previous trials on homeless people…  I’m pretty sure there are plenty of those existing today.  Since Bucky’s, uh… dead… maybe that cut into things, too.”

“I’d also wonder how much Barnes being a fictional character came into it,” said Isaac.

Steve looked at him incredulously.  “He wasn’t fictional!” he exclaimed.

“You keep acting like objective reality matters to subjective interpretation, and it never does,” Isaac told Steve calmly.  “Yes, Barnes was a real person, but _the version Lee’s been playing_ is a fiction,” Isaac reasoned.  “He’s been struggling all season with not having a whole lot to go on.”

“Now, that sounds like _exactly_ the kind of bullshit reasoning I usually hear with magic,” Lee agreed.

“Alright!”  Stark clapped his hands.  “You!”  He pointed at Lee.  “Up to my workshop for the fMRI!  You!” At Natasha.  “Find out what Clint found, and how many heads we have to bust.  You!”  At Bruce.  “With me, I don’t do all this biology bullshit.  And you!”  At Steve.  “Hug somebody until you stop missing your BFF so much you go _blind_ with it, Jesus.”  

Darcy opened her arms enthusiastically.  

Natasha leaned over the side of the couch.  “Start the movie,” she said.  “This won’t take long.”   

 

It didn’t, actually.  

Lee had been seated on a stool in Tony Stark’s workshop for all of half an hour, including the time to get the fMRI calibrated and the time spent hopping off the stool to perform various tasks, when Tony called out to him, “Hold still, we’re doing a just a few more scans!”  

He and Bruce argued, back and forth, in quiet tones, Tony’s voice dismissive, Bruce’s serious.  Blue lights on metal arms whirred around Lee, and Lee smiled awkwardly at the robot across the lab, who started working some sort of sciencey mixing machine.  

Or, he realized, when the robot brought him a smoothie, a blender.  It could have been a blender, too.

“Don’t drink that,” said Tony, appearing suddenly to take the cup away.  Lee shrugged apologetically at the robot.  “Seriously, the last one had hydraulic fluid in it.  Come down to the common room again, we’ll give you the full report.”   

 

“Zilch,” said Tony.

“What?”

“Zilch,” he repeated, “Bupkis, nada, nothing, zero - Was I not audible the first time?  I can be louder -”

“Please, don’t,” sighed Bruce.  

“Isn't zilch a kind of cow?” asked Isaac, and Jodie pulled her head back to look at him incredulously.  Considering that both of them were lying stretched, full length, on the bottom bunk-couch, the move actually took some effort on her part.  

“That's _milch,_ I think,” cut in Bruce.  “But any way Tony is _wrong,_  because it _wasn’t nothing.”_ He looked at Tony in exasperation.

“It might as well be nothing!” argued Tony.

“I thought you didn’t do all this ‘squishy, mucky, biology bullshit’?  There is one person in this room who _does,_ so maybe you should _listen_ to him,” Bruce replied, snippy.  

Darcy put her hand up, the other not moving from… Huh.  From where it was drawing patterns in the blond hair of the supersoldier curled up with his head in her lap.  

 _Get it, Darcy,_ Lee thought.  He tried not to acknowledge the slight stab of disappointment.  

“I can help!” Darcy was saying earnestly.  “I’ve gotten _really good_ at bullshitting in science fields I’m unprepared for!”

Bruce sighed.  

Darcy’s eyes narrowed.  

“For example,” she went on, a little more serious, a little more edged, “I remember my scientific method.”  Tony looked like he was gearing up for a doozy of a scathing comment at that, but she rode right over him.   _“I remember,_ for example, that you report the results as data _first,_ and _then_ argue over interpretation.”  

There was an embarrassed silence.

Darcy was a fundamentally kind person, so she gave them an out.  “Sometimes, you have to go back to basics to see the obvious,” she said.

“Alright,” said Tony.  “Jarvis, give us a normal brain.”  A series of about twelve images of, yes, looked like 3-D holographic brains, appeared on the wall of the common room.  Each of the brains had different colored segments in it, the bright blues, greens, yellows, and oranges looking surprisingly like a weather forecast.

Lee was interested to note that, although the graphics _looked_ like holograms, they actually were flat images.  Maybe the holographic presenters weren’t available down here?  He definitely recalled seeing them in the workshop...

“This,” Bruce explained, “Is a normal brain, both at rest -” He indicated the top left brain.  “- and during a series of basic activities.  These two -” He tapped the left half of the bottom row.  “- indicate a brain solving a puzzle with which it is familiar, and then unfamiliar.  For someone like Darcy, the first might be if I asked her whether one of her astrological readings was significant, or insignificant; the latter would be if I asked her whether a cell should be mounted on a wet, or dry slide, because despite what she claims she does not actually know much biology.”

“Hey!”

Bruce cocked his head at the wall.  “JARVIS, can you display the margin of error overlay for normal brains on these images?”  

A slight pause, then: _“I apologize, Dr. Banner, but that would make the image somewhat unclear for eyes with normal human acuity.”_

“Which is mostly what we have here,” Bruce sighed.  “What about just the three scans I indicated?  Blow them up?”

Three brains appeared on the wall, each colored segment bright at the center, then having a buffer-zone around it of less saturated color.  “The solid color here,” Bruce indicated on the center brain, a yellow mass in the front center, extending around the sides, “is where almost all, 95% or more, of human brains respond to the given task.  The less solid colors,” he pointed to a murky yellow-green taking up considerably more of the front of the brain, “is where only some people respond, at least 68%.”  

“That is a weirdly specific number,” Jodie mumbled.  “Why not 65%?  Or 69%?”  She sniggered.

“It’s a math thing,” said Tony.  “Trust me, I was as disappointed as you are.”

“JARVIS, please give us the comparable scans of Lee.”

Seven more brains appeared on the wall:  one opposite the top brain, four opposite the middle, and two opposite the bottom-most.  

“Huh,” Lee said.  “Cool.”

“Obviously,” Bruce waved his hand at the top image of Lee’s mind, “that’s the rest image, the one to which everything was compared.  We actually had a much easier time getting it than Tony’s rest images, for the record, Lee.  You’re very good at being calm.”

Lee tried not to look as pleased as he was at that.  “Thank you,” he said.  

“The second row are tasks which data analysis indicates were likely familiar to you - based on similarity to the control brains doing familiar tasks - and the bottom row are tasks which are unfamiliar.”  

“I am starting to see the point of the bupkis comment,” Darcy admitted.  “Lee's scans look an awful lot like your controls - the images of normal brains,” she clarified for her audience.  Steve sat up to examine the images, frowning minutely in Captain Face.

Lee had to admit, from where he was sitting, his brain looked pretty normal.

It was kind of cool.

“Why doesn’t Lee have the… what did you call it, ‘margin of error’ overlay?” Steve sounded suspicious, as if he thought they were trying to pull one over on him.

“Because for Lee, N equals one,” explained Darcy.  Then she stuck her tongue out at Bruce.  

He rolled his eyes.  “We actually _did_ use a group of sub-tasks for a number of these, Darcy, but mostly the results were fairly consistent.”  He pointed to two of Lee’s images: the third on row two and the second on row three.  “These two were less so, and there, he did have some margin of error.  But no, Captain, if there aren’t significant differences in the results, we won’t show the insignificant ones.”

Bruce pursed his lips at the wall critically.  “JARVIS, would you mind labeling these with the tasks in question?”

“Oh,” said Lee, who was close enough to read the appearing labels.  

“Ah,” said Steve, who apparently was close enough, as well.  He sounded a lot more grim than Lee did about it.

“The reason Tony says _zilch_ and I say _not zilch_ is here,” Bruce said, touching two of the middle-row brains with hands that looked too strong to belong to a scientist.  “Yes, the brain function is generally normal.  If you compare his brain to a normal human brain, they look a lot alike.  But these two groups of tasks should be a level down, with the unfamiliar tasks.”  

He indicated the one marked _gun mechanics, use, maintenance_ and the one marked _strategy._

Steve made an angry noise.  “We already knew that,” he griped.  “From the first-person recounting of their escape.  Remember?”  

There wasn’t a lot of sarcasm in that _Remember?,_ but there was enough, really.

And _no_ Brooklyn in the man right now.  

Lee reminded himself not to find that hot.

“We’ve defined the problem,” Tony broke in, sounding weirdly sensitive, for Tony.  “JARVIS, show him the verbal tasks.”

A new series of brains pulled up, four rows, this time.  They bounced a little as they slid into place, like the animations in a powerpoint presentation, and Lee thought that might be JARVIS showing off a bit.

“Long story short, Lee can’t verbalize anything about Barnes that he wouldn’t know from portraying him,” Tony said.  “And that, we _weren’t_ sure of from their _first-person recounting.”_  

Given that it was Tony Stark, that was also a fairly low level of sarcasm.  

“When we asked him how he knew things, he was always able to cite a 21st century source,” Bruce confirmed.  “In fact,” he added, “There were a couple things I asked him that he took a moment to remember which, frankly, he _should_ have known.”

“Like?”

“Ooh, the nickname thing!” Tony cooed, snapping.  

On the wall, the four rows of brains were replaced by a large single brain (Lee’s, presumably), with a yellow zone, labelled _subject response,_ a green zone _(normal response - known query),_ and a red zone _(normal response - unknown query.)_

Beside the brain, there was a video of Lee, sitting on his stool in the lab.  Tony’s voice rang out on the speakers.  

 

 

> _“Okay, pictures of guys!  Name!”  He held up a tablet with a picture of Captain America, and Lee said, “Steve,” as the yellow zone swarmed into the green territory._
> 
> _“Name!”  Another picture of Captain America, a little bluer, a little more ragged, and the yellow flared everywhere as Lee squinted at it._
> 
> _“Isaac,” he decided.  “Also, that was kind of a trick question.”_
> 
> _“True,” shrugged Tony unrepentantly.  “Name!”_
> 
> _Lee hesitated, and the yellow flowed into the red zone, then back to the green.  “James Buchanan Barnes,” Lee answered._
> 
> _Bruce, bent over a monitor that was presumably showing Lee’s results, looked up sharply.  Tony must have caught the momentary glitch in Lee’s system, because he was already raising an eyebrow._
> 
> _“Nickname?” asked Bruce._
> 
> _The yellow flowed into red again, then back into green._
> 
> _“Bucky,” Lee answered calmly._

 In the common room, Lee winced.  He knew his own Actor Voice when he heard it.

Darcy frowned.  “Weird,” she summarized.  

“Tony, show them the rest of it,” said Bruce, and Tony waved a hand at the wall where images began to flash almost fast enough to keep up with the discussion.

“Right, we also did some basic scans - CT, infrared, that sort of thing - just to check whether he was getting any other effects from the spell.  Long story short, his body seems to be in perfect working order, if a little warm; compared to previous images of him - which, they show a surprising amount of skin in that show of yours don’t they? - he hasn’t gained or lost any muscle mass, height, bone development, or adipose, at least as determinable by gross anatomy.”  Tony walked to the far side of the room, where a liquor cabinet stood, and poured himself a drink.  “See, Brucie?  I can do the wetwork just fine.”

“I’m not convinced you’re using the word wetwork correctly,” noted Isaac, still supine on the couch.

“So what does all of this mean?” asked Steve sharply.  

“I already told you that,” said Tony, gesturing with his scotch.  “Bupkis.”  

“No big change,” Lee shrugged, “No big problem.”

“But there is a change,” Steve - no, the Captain - insisted.  “You have skills now that you didn’t before.”

Lee felt a scowl coming on, and smoothed it away, crossing his arms instead.  “You know,” he said, keeping his voice calm, “I really don’t have any problem with being able to defend myself.  This is not the first time I’ve been attacked; it’s also not the first time I’ve been kidnapped.  Maybe it’s a good idea for me to know how to hit back.”

“So you want us to just leave it,” asked the Captain, incredulous.

Lee kept his gaze calm with experience and practice.   _Specifically, the experience of wanting to smack someone who thinks they know best for you, and practice at not doing that!_

“This,” he indicated the data scrolling across the wall, “Represents a baseline.  We’ll check me over every week for a while -” Doable, since his hiatus-job was in the city. “- and then every month, and if it doesn’t change, we’ll assume everything’s fine.  And if it _does_  change -” He looked to Bruce to confirm, not counting on Tony for support because Tony’s first instinct was always to be contrary.  “- then we’ll catch it.”

Captain America’s blue eyes were serious, thinking over the options presented and searching the plan for pitfalls.  It looked, actually, a lot like Isaac's impression of the look.  _Okay,_ Lee thought, _I should_ seriously _not be finding that so hot!_

“Have you called him yet?” he asked.  

Lee frowned, trying to think what he meant.  “Oh, you mean… uh… my wizard friend?”  He shook his head.  “Not yet; I was too busy getting scanned, and, uh, I think he might be busy right now, too.”

Captain America didn’t scowl; Captain America had a _disappointed face._

“His last text said something about Ents,” Lee protested weakly.  Isaac craned his neck to look up at him, tilted his head, and then lay back down.

One blond brow rose over Captain America's majestic nose.

 “I’ll call him right now,” Lee sighed.  

 

“Hi, this is Tony.  If I’m not answering my phone, there is a 95% chance that it’s either because I’m _really busy,_ or because I’m at work.  Or both.  Henry, if this is you, stop procrastinating and go write.  Everyone _not_ under deadline for _The Baron's Amnesiac Bride_ or whatever, leave a message.”

_Beeeep._

“Hey Tony, it’s Lee.  Uh.  So.  Stuff happened, tonight.”

Lee looked over at the Captain, who was leaning against the wall in his living room, looking significantly more rigid than usual.  

Darcy had volunteered to make sure Isaac and Jodie either got home safely, or got a place to stay.  

_“Jane’s out of town at a conference,” she shrugged, “And she took Thor with her, thank God.  I’ll just dump ‘em in Jane's and Eric’s rooms.”  She looked critically at the amorphous blob of human on the couch.  “That’s assuming they even need more than one,” she noted._

Natasha had gone out after Clint and Kate, who were still at Komstadt Solutions.  Lee, who had been a bit worried that they were still gone, was relieved to hear that they were all fine, just busy.  In addition to the dead guard in the hallway, they had a found the living guard in the hallway surprisingly _still_ living; Claudia, Monette, and Dudley, still all chained up and, except for Monette, still unconscious; and a stash of ID’s at Ron the Security Guard’s desk, which Clint felt was probably from their previous victims.  

 _“Half these wallets have dog tags hidden in them,” Natasha had reported, voice doing that flat thing Lee and Isaac had heard that first night, the one that sounded neutral, but actually meant she was_ pissed _.  “It’s actually not a bad idea for hiding a wallet indefinitely.  No one ever checks the lost-and-found bin.”_

Then Bruce and Tony had wandered off, possibly back up to the workshop.  That left Lee, whom Steve had escorted upstairs by _taking his elbow -_ an unsettling experience coming from a man who almost never initiated physical contact outside of the formal handshake.  Steve had steered Lee right over to the couch, pushing him onto it with a little shove, then gone into the kitchen, gotten two root beers, and tossed one to Lee before taking his position on the wall.  “Call,” he had ordered.

Lee had called.

“Magic stuff,” Lee clarified for the phone.  He took a breath in steadily and let it out, not letting his breathing betray any emotion.  “Someone tried to…  I guess it would be a form of possession?  Possession by knowledge?  I’m not sure.  Anyway.  They cast a spell on me, it didn’t work very well, we beat the bad guys, now my friends are all worried, and want me to get checked out.  So I’m calling you.  Because you’re my expert.”  Lee paused, tried to think of anything he could add.  “Sorry in advance about any jokes that get made about _checking me out.”_ Anything else?  “Please call me back when you can,” he finished politely, then hung up.  

Glared at Steve.  

“Satisfied?” he asked pointedly.  

“No,” said Steve - okay, said _Captain America,_ still, even though he was less than four feet from his ridiculously overstuffed couch, and wearing jeans and one of Isaac’s too-tight t-shirts.  “I’ll be satisfied when he calls you back, and I hear from him directly that you’re going to be fine.”

His voice was hitting a range somewhere between baritone and tenor, the sheer sobriety of his tone taking it down another notch and sending it rocketing down Lee’s spine.  Lee looked down, away from the uncompromising blue of his eyes, and played with the nap of the velour again the way he had months ago.   _This,_  he thought,  _is not convenient!_

“You’re doing it again,” observed the Captain grimly.

Lee’s head snapped back up.  “Doing _what?”_ he demanded.

Steve made an odd noise, a _hmph_ noise that somehow sounded manly instead of sounding like a fifty-five-year-old schoolteacher.  “Making Bucky faces,” he said, and although his face was all Captain, his voice all Steve.   

Unhappy Steve.

Lee closed his eyes, then quickly opened them and breathed in and out steadily, instead.  “Steve,” he said, trying to keep his voice calm, and not sad, “This is not a Bucky face.  This is one of _my_ faces.”

Captain America cocked an eyebrow at him again.  “Can you be sure?” he asked.

 _“Yes,”_ Lee insisted.   “I have definitely made that face before.  It _sucked,”_ he added before he’d thought better of it.  

“I haven’t seen it,” Steve insisted.

“That’s because you’ve never been _Captain America_ this much, before!” Lee said hotly, and Steve blinked.  

“Oh,” he said.  “I…”  He sighed, ran a hand through the back of his hair, and relaxed.  “Geez,” muttered Steve.  “Sorry, was I freaking you out?”

Lee squinted at him.  “Are you doing that deliberately?” he asked suspiciously.

Tiny quirk of a smile at the corner of Steve’s mouth.  “A little bit,” he admitted, eyes softening.  “Is it helping?”

“I think it may be doing the opposite of helping,” Lee said, goggling at him.  

Steve broke character for a moment to make an exasperated face at him.  

The exasperation was distinctly Captain-y.  

Lee looked away, focusing anywhere except on Steve.  He tapped the top of his root beer to knock any lingering bubbles away, then popped the top.  He took a long drink, swallowing several times around the carbonation, letting the syrupy sweetness coat his throat and knock away some of the nastiness of the night.  Then he set the can down on Steve’s coffee table and spoke without making eye contact.  

“Don’t make it more than it is,” he warned.  “It’s just that I hadn’t realized…”  He stopped, licked his lips.  Tried again.  “The whole Captain America…. Thing…”  He shifted his gaze towards the other man without meeting his eyes and waved a hand at Steve, indicating his face, then his body, then, with increased emphasis, _that face_ again.  “It’s got more of an impact on me than I had anticipated.”  Having gotten that out, he reached for the soda again.  

“So this is a face I haven’t seen before… because this is your Intimidated Face?”

For a simple sentence, there was a lot to unpack there, Lee reflected.  

There was a very small part of him that was geekily happy about Steve adopting their persona-shorthand, because Steve had the flamboyant soul of an actor and really needed to let that flag fly a little.

Much more significantly, though, was Steve’s tone:  Even and sober, like the Captain, tenor and Brooklyn, like the man, and trying to hide a disappointment that lurked beneath the surface of it.  A hurt.  

He didn’t _want_ Lee to be intimated by him.

And the third thing was, Lee thought clinically, that Steve had just offered him a plausible explanation.  Lee could tell Steve he was intimidated, and that would cover all manner of gaffs and sins.  He could ride that horse for _years_ , especially if Steve managed to stuff the Captain back down in whatever psychic crevasse he’d been keeping him in.

 _But Steve told you about BUCKY,_ he reminded himself.

Lee gave a little huff, but made sure to say it evenly, looking up to meet Steve’s eyes.  It was the least he could do.

“This isn’t my Intimidated Face.  This is my Turned On In Spite of Myself Face.”   

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What, didn't you want 2,000+ words of faux-medical jibber-jabber?  
> 1\. Not a radiologist, here; if there's something wrong with the fMRI, please tell me; if I can fix it in the fic, I will.  
> 2\. The book Henry's writing per: Tony's voicemail is a reference to an absolutely *darling* Stucky fic, _The Supersoldier's Amnesiac Groom._ I cannot tell you how many times I have re-read that fic. A lot. It's awesome.  
>  3\. PS: I did a bad thing: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6757777


	9. Steve (Just Like We Started)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the principle pairing of the entire fic finally comes to fruition; in which the plot wraps up; and in which we meditate on the stress-handling habits of the Avengers through the metaphor of breakfast.
> 
> Oh, and in which there's an appearance by Tony Foster.

 

“This isn’t my Intimidated Face.  This is my Turned On In Spite of Myself Face.”

Steve froze.  Leaned his head forward.  Studied Lee’s face as if there were answers in it.

The only things on Lee’s face, though, were the ones Lee wanted to be there, because Lee, he knew, was an excellent actor.

So Steve made a maneuver it had taken him fourteen missions in Europe to finally learn:  the strategic retreat.  Not _running;_ if you run, they'll never let you stop.  No, Steve was _retreating_ to the kitchen, pulling out two more root beers, and then charging the line again, advancing to the couch where he sat on Lee’s left, offering him the second drink.  

Lee nodded thanks, taking the can and setting it beside the first one, which he picked up and finished off.  He crumpled the aluminum up, twisting it to get it to collapse, and sent it sailing for the recycling basket Steve had placed outside the doorway to the kitchen.

It missed, hitting the edge and bouncing off, and Steve took the opportunity to get up and put in it properly.  When he sat back down, he let his head fall back - an easy trick he’d learned in the acting classes for keeping himself out of Captain Mode - and spoke.  “I’m trying to think what to say first,” he admitted.

“I know,” Lee muttered.

“I guess…”  He let his hands fall down by his side, open, a shorthand to himself for _don’t wear a mask._  It worked, but never lasted very long.  “The first thing is, why _in spite of yourself?”_

Lee shrugged and shifted to echo his posture, looking at Steve’s unremarkable ceiling with his own hands at his sides.  “Lots of reasons, I guess,” he said.  “There’s the job.  We can start there.”

Steve nodded, moving only his head.  “You’ve said before that you didn’t feel you could be out _and_ stay employed on _THC.”_

“Still true,” Lee said immediately.  “But just think, as bad as the press would be about the guy playing Bucky Barnes being gay…  How much _worse_ do you think it would be if they could say he was gay _for Captain America?”_

After two years out of the ice, Steve was pretty familiar with how the American media reacted to things.  It would not be pretty.

“Some day,” Steve noted, trying not to feel guilty about it and instead just feeling depressed, “I will come out.”  

It was the first time he’d thought it in so many words, much less said it.  His usual tactic was to avoid thinking about it at all.  In fact, he avoided thinking about _any_ relationships, sexual, romantic, in between, boys or girls.  He limited his fantasies to people he knew well (Peggy, before; Natasha now, although only on nights when it was storming; Thor, only on nights when it _wasn’t_ storming; and Bucky.  Always, Bucky.)  He didn’t go on dates.  He didn’t _want_ to go on dates; that would be _messy._

(He didn’t think, even to himself, that in this context, _messy_ meant _potentially painful._ It did, though, and Steve had had enough of pain.)

He thought it was probably a bad example to be setting, allowing people to assume that he was heterosexual.  Especially because it was just _easier._ But, after seventy years, he had finally learned to pick his battles, and until there was a target to capture inside it, he was staying the heck away from that particular quagmire.

Lee nudged his shoulder.  “Yeah,” he said.  “Me, too.”  

Steve turned his head to the right, and Lee was looking back, green eyes calm, sympathetic.  His mouth had that sardonic little half-smile it wore sometimes, and Steve gave him a grateful smile of his own in return before looking back up at the ceiling.

“So,” Steve said carefully.  “That’s one point.  If we did this, we wouldn’t tell anyone.”

“No, we wouldn’t,” Lee said, and the relief was easy to read even without looking at him.

Steve nodded, head rocking on the back of the couch.  It felt good on the long muscles of his neck, and he did it again.  “What’s next?” he asked.

“God,” Lee said, swiping a hand through his sable-colored hair.  “I don’t know.  That I have a type?”

Steve quirked a smile.  “Should I warn Isaac?” he asked, watching the ceiling.

Lee gave a short, barking laugh.  “The only time I’ve ever even _thought_ about being attracted to Isaac - and I’m not saying I actually went so far as to _do_ it, either - was today, when he was being a badass, taking down the guards.  And, first of all, he pretty clearly _hated_ doing that, but second of all... Isaac really _is_ straight.”

Lee’s voice had the ironic self-mockery of someone who knew exactly how ridiculous that sentence was, considering the source.  On the other hand…

“I’m pretty sure Isaac’s only ‘straight’ because ‘Jodie-sexual’ isn’t a real option,” Steve said wryly.  

Lee laughed again, warm and easy, but also tired.  Well, it had been a long day.

“So what’s your ‘type’?” Steve asked, partly to move the conversation along, but also genuinely curious.  He looked over again to see Lee’s response.

“Heroes,” Lee said wryly.  “Mouthy ones,” he added.  “Who smirk sometimes.  And glare. And always do the right thing for people who need protecting.”  He swallowed, adam’s apple bobbing, and his eyes were soft.  “And when they stop being heroes, and step down for the night, they’re humble, and they look me in the eye wearing an expression that tell me I’m important.”  Lee slanted a green glance at him.  “And they have great asses,” he finished.  

Steve swallowed.  “Huh,” he said.

“Yeah,” Lee huffed.  

“Based on that description, I feel like I would really like Tony,” Steve said thoughtfully.

“You two are never allowed in a room together.  The sass would reach critical mass and explode, killing us all.”

On cue, Lee’s phone started playing the _Darkest Night_ theme.

Lee groaned, fishing it out of his pocket, answering it on speakerphone, and putting it on the couch between them.  “Hey, Tony,” he said, sounding resigned.

_“Lee?  What happened?!”_

“Basically what I told you on the voicemail:  got kidnapped, spell got cast, I felt fine and self-rescued.  People are worried because the spell was supposed to do a lot of damage, but, again, it _didn’t,_ and I feel _fine.”_

“Stop leading the witness, Lee,” Steve protested.  

“Also, you’re on speakerphone,” Lee said pointedly.

The phone was quiet between them, but there was breathing on the other end, so Tony hadn’t hung up.  Steve leaned back a little, hooking his ankle over the opposing knee.

_“Who else is there?”_ Tony asked after a second.

“My name is Steve; it’s a pleasure to meet you.”

_“Uh-huh.”_ He sounded distinctly unimpressed.

“You probably know him as Captain America,” Lee said, rolling his eyes at Steve.  Steve crossed his arms over his chest in response.

_“Holy shit, really?”_ asked the voice on the phone.  Then it added, _“Did you know you’re one of the major historical icons of the LGBT community?”_  

Steve could hear the grin; Tony was definitely taking the opportunity to stir the shit.

“Somebody may have mentioned that, yes,” Steve answered dryly in Captain Voice.  Lee flicked him off.  Steve, considering what he knew about his audience, added, “People keep acting like that should make me mad, but frankly, if the story really were what the queer community thinks it was, _I_ would call it romantic _,_ too.”

_“Well, you don’t sound like it pisses you off_ too _badly,”_ Tony observed, sounding pleasantly surprised. _“Okay.  So what happened with my idiot... friend, Lee?”_

_Preserving Lee’s closeted state even if he didn’t exactly approve of it.  Good friend,_ Steve thought.

They told him about the spell, answering as many of his questions as they could.  “I didn’t catch the words they were saying; they weren’t in English, and also terror does terrible things for my memory,” Lee confessed lightly.  “I picked up the parchment they got it from, though, and I’m planning on overnighting it up to you.”

_“That should help, thanks,”_ said Tony, sounding surprised.   _"I’ll keep it safe when I'm done reading it, too.”_

“Don't mail it," Steve countermanded.  "We'll fly up and drop if off in person; in the meantime, we'll keep it here.  Tony, would a copy of the fMRI results help you?”

_“God, no!  Give me the short version.”_

“Nothing’s changed, except the things we expected to change,” said Lee.

_“Good enough.  Okay.  So they were ‘choking up on the spell’ - and really, thanks for that, Lee; they were doing it with a fictional character, based on a real person who happens to be dead; and most of the reported effects, which are immediate according to the people who’ve cast it before, haven’t occurred?”_ They indicated that this was, in fact, an accurate summary of events.   _“Okay.  Then it sounds like this is going to just blow over.”_

_“Good,”_ Steve said, then winced a little at how emphatic that had been.  

Luckily, Tony was moving on, not seeming to have noticed.   _“Lee,”_ he asked, _“did you have your Sigil on you when they cast this?”_

“Did, and still do,” said Lee reassuringly.

“Sigil?”

“I call it a good luck token most of the time for simplicity,” Lee said, fishing out his wallet.  From it, he pulled a laminated card with an intricately drawn set of spiraling designs on it.  He examined it critically, reporting, “It doesn’t seem to have taken any damage.”

_“It basically_ is _a good luck charm,”_ Tony explained to Steve.   _“It makes people less likely to use magic on him, or, if they do, it works like, uh, static on a radio signal?  Spells’re less effective.”_

“Useful,” Steve said, raising his eyebrows.  “May I see that?”

Lee passed it over.

“Hmm…”  The designs were distinct; there were five of them, dancing across the card, their loops interlocking, but not disguising that each pattern was separate.  Steve frowned, tilting the card away from him so that it caught the light.  “You can laminate spells?”

_“Some yes, some no.  The rules of what is and isn’t allowed are pretty bizarre.  Like, one of the first spells I learned was Come To Me -”_

“Not what you’re thinking, he mostly uses it on his car keys when he can’t find them,” Lee put in.

_“- Fuck you, Lee,”_ Tony sighed, but then continued without pausing, _“But it took me four years - and an apprentice who thought the spell was easy - before I finally understood Go Away.  So, yeah, some spells you can laminate; Sigils are one of ‘em.  Some spells you can’t.  Banishment runes?  Unfortunately, one of those.”_

Lee grinned maliciously.  “Speaking of,” he said, “How did it go with the Ents?”

Tony gave a sort of whining groan.   _“Fuck you, Lee,”_ he repeated.

_“I thought we agreed they were dryads?”_ asked a voice on the other end of the line.

Steve’s eyebrows went up again.  “Someone else there?” he asked, his tone sharp but polite.

_“Henry,”_ Tony sighed.   _“He’s in the room with me, not on the phone; he just has very good hearing.  And also,”_ Steve could _hear_ the glare being mounted, _“needs to learn to knock!”_

_“Maybe someday,”_ Henry said unconcernedly.   _“Who are you talking to?  Besides Lee?”_ Henry managed to put a tone into the last word which implied both emotional involvement and incredible stupidity, both on Tony’s part.

_“A friend of Lee’s.  Go away.”_

_“Anybody I’d be interested in meeting?"_ Steve had a sudden mental image of white teeth showing in a slow, intent smile.  

_“So how’s the_ book _coming?”_ Tony asked pointedly, and after a second Steve heard the sound of a door slam coming through the line.

“Was the original laminate on this card done well?” asked Steve, returning to business.

_“Uh, Amy did a whole batch of them up in the office one night.  Why, what do you mean?”_

“It’s bubbled over where the designs are, as if it were giving off a gas.  It’s faint, but I can see it if the light hits it right.”

Tony was silent for a moment, and over the line, Steve heard the shuffling sound of footsteps; a door; more footsteps, and then a knock.   _“Hey, Zev, can I see your Sigil?”_

Then, _“The light is terrible in here.”_

There was a very faint sound of classical music which got suddenly louder as if the phone were moving closer to the source, and then Tony said, _“It may be normal wear and tear, it may not.  Whatever, I’m sending you a new one.  Thanks, Zev,”_ he added.

_“Hey, is that Lee?  Tell him I said Hi.”_

“Hi back,” said Lee, smiling like he had a gut wound. “And maybe pass it on to Amy?  If she’s not still mad at me.”

_“I think Amy will always be kind of mad at you,”_ Tony said sadly, _“but I’ll pass it on anyway, and it’ll still mean a lot to her.”_

Beside Steve, Lee’s hands were fisted at his sides as if he were physically holding back things he wanted to say.  When it came, his voice was soft and vulnerable  

“Thanks, Tony.”

A pause.

_“Any time,”_ Tony said quietly.

The line went dead.

Steve watched the phone’s display show the call, then the disconnect screen, then the home screen again.  Looking up, he met Lee’s thousand-yard-stare with a smile.  “Clean bill of health,” he said evenly.  He tried not to look as relieved about that as he really was.  

Lee gave a little shake, then a half-smile.  “Magic health, yeah,” he agreed.  “Good catch on the Sigil.”

“No problem,” Steve said automatically.  

Lee broke his gaze, leaning forward to pop open his second root beer.  “So,” he said, voice hoarse.  “Where were we?”

Steve smiled, one of the real ones that always came and went before he’d had time to catch his face and study it - another acting class exercise, one which was being difficult.  He relaxed into his comfortable couch again.  “We were reviewing all the reasons to be cautious about our burgeoning mutual attraction,” he said cheerfully.

Lee’s breath left his body in a rush.  “Did we say mutual?” he asked.  “I’m pretty sure we never got as far as _mutual._ That part is new.”

“Lee,” Steve said, and, just to be a jerk, did it mostly in Captain Voice.  And gave the Captain Smile.  “You’re not the only one with a type.  It’s mutual.”

Lee didn’t whimper, but he kind of looked like he wanted to.  

“Fuck you,” he choked out.  “You - You’re doing that on purpose!”

Steve laughed, delighted.  

“You _jerk!”_ Lee raged.  “That is reason number three to be cautious, right there: because Steve Rogers is a jerk.”

“Oh, he’s a punk!” Steve agreed cheerfully, easily, adding “Captain America’s alright, though.”  

Lee sputtered.  

Steve killed his drink again, dropping the can in the recycling as he went back to the kitchen for more, this time bringing back the rest of twelve-pack.  

“What’s reason number four?” he asked, setting it down on the table between them.  

“Oh,” said Lee, settling down.  “Well, there’s the target thing.”

“Because of your propensity to be the target of magic?” Steve said.  “But that would happen whether or not we were… uh…”  He foundered.  Took a guess:  “Dating?”

Lee smiled around the lip of his pop can, which was… interesting.  “Dating’s one option,” he agreed.  “I’m not convinced it’s the one I’d go for, here.”

Steve caught and released a breath at the heat in Lee’s voice.  “Well, if it is the one we go for,” he said steadily, “I’m okay with _dating_ a Magical Mousetrap.”

Lee laughed.  “Well, that’s a new word for it,” he said.  

"It's a phrase, actually.  Two words."

“Whatever," Lee rolled his eyes.  "As it happens, though, I wasn’t talking about me being a walking target for magic.  I was talking about me being a walking target for people who want to hurt Captain America.”

Steve stopped smiling.  

“One of the reasons Tony and I had problems,” Lee admitted, avoiding Steve’s eyes, “Was that I didn’t do very well with being…”  He grimaced.   _“The Damsel.”_  Steve frowned, not liking the verbiage.  “It’s something I need to work on, apparently, if my type is Heroes.”  Lee shrugged a shoulder.  “Or I could stick to women, who I apparently want very different things from.”  His eyes flicked up to Steve’s, then away again.  “I’d miss some pretty good stuff that way, though.”

Steve had a sudden memory from earlier in the night:  Lee standing in the common room, arms crossed.   _“I really don’t have any problem with being able to defend myself,”_ he had said.  And, _“Maybe it’s a good idea for me to know how to hit back.”_  At the time, Steve had thought Lee simply resistant to further testing, and had remembered, uneasily, how Bucky had avoided the med tents after Azzano.  But maybe there was more to it than that…

“If you had had lockpicks,” Steve asked thoughtfully, “Would you have been able to get out of your cuffs tonight?”

“N -” Lee started to answer, then stopped, and changed his answer.  “I don’t know,” he said slowly.  “Could Bucky?”

Steve had a memory of him and Bucky, practicing for hours on the sacristy door because they'd been pretty sure they wouldn't be bothered there, only to scream and grab at each other when Father Nico walked in.  "So, yes then.  And we already know you can handle a gun, now - we’ll schedule you some time on the range with Clint to find out how good you are.  Maybe get you better, if you want.”

Lee nodded enthusiastically.

“Can you… uh…  Back then, there was a series of tests they gave you:  climbing a knotted rope, carrying weights…”  Steve wasn’t sure how well his Basic Training experience would translate, seventy years later and to a man from another country.

“Obstacle courses!  Yeah, I’ve done those.”  Lee leaned forward, excitedly.  “Do you know what a Tough Mudder is?  I was planning to train for one in August, and I bet I could talk Isaac into doing it with me.  Hell, it’s right before shooting starts up again, I may get the rest of the cast, too.”

“Any self defense training?”

“Bupkis,” Lee announced, swirling his root beer in a passable impression of Tony.  

Steve snorted.  “Well, we can make that happen, too.  I think Darcy had expressed interest.”  

Darcy had actually indicated that she planned to drag Jane into the gym to get the petite scientist “fresh air, sunlight, and slightly less chance of getting kidnapped by AIM”, but Steve thought it might be polite to leave that part out.  (For one thing, he had doubts about the efficacy of even Darcy’s formidable skills at dragging Jane away from her research.)

“So what do you think?” he asked.  “Personal and long-range self-defense, escapology, physical fitness…  Is that enough to counter the Target issue?”

“It goes a long way,” Lee admitted, rubbing the back of his neck.  “Even being encouraged to prepare for trouble goes a long way.  I…  some of the issue with… that…  It’s more in how I think of it, than how it really is.”  He gave his half-smile again.  “What Isaac called the difference between the subjective and the objective, earlier tonight.”

“Isaac hits the nail on the damned head sometimes,” Steve muttered.

“You’re telling me.”  Lee rolled his eyes, then drank half a can down again.  He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, then asked, “What about you?”

“Me?”

“Those were my big issues,” Lee reminded Steve.  “Well, those, plus…  Tony.”

“Your version of Peggy,” Steve agreed.  

“Not my Bucky?”

“I sort of think _you’re_ your Bucky.”

“Hmm…”

Steve shifted his position, putting his right foot back on the floor and crossing the left knee over, instead.  “Well,” he said, “My issues.”  He watched the light gleaming off of the aluminum cans.  “For starters,” he said, “I’m a little uncomfortable with my own adherence to type.”

Lee laughed.  

“No, I know,” Steve said, smiling briefly.  “But seriously, think for a moment of the reaction of people like, oh… Darcy…”  He didn’t even have to finish the sentence; Lee was already cracking up.  “It’s a legitimate concern,” Steve insisted.  

“Oh, oh, my god, yeah, it is,” Lee wheezed.  “But, look; if this becomes known - or, I mean, if it becomes _real,_ and _then_ becomes known, and bear in mind that we’ve already said anything we do will be in the closet - people are going to laugh at you anyway.  There would be comments, and jokes at your expense, and non-malicious gossip that hurts anyway, and, just…”  He let his arms flop to the couch.  “It wouldn’t matter who it was.  It could be me, it could be Isaac if he weren’t Jodie-sexual, hell, it could be Darcy; some people, and maybe a lot of people, are going to voice their opinions on the matter.

“The thing is,” he continued, “And I’m aware of the hypocrisy of _me_ making this speech…  You have to figure out what you’re comparing to.  Are you comparing to now?  Because now is better than a year ago, but you’re still pretty lonely.”

Steve sucked in a breath, feeling sucker-punched by the truth of that.  He was hit by another flash of memory, this one of standing in an abandoned boxing ring, looking at a pile of destroyed punching bags.  He had been swarmed by a feeling of hopelessness, of futility; even obliterating the bags didn’t do any good, didn’t make a single _dent_ in that feeling, because there was _always another bag..._

Steve hadn’t felt like that in a while…  But then, he spent a lot less time in the gym these days, too.

That was… kind of the point.  

_Maria Hill had arched one perfect eyebrow.  “You looked like you were having fun.  And it’s good for you to make friends.”_

Hmm.

“So,” said Lee, having given him time to process this, “Are you comparing dating me to dating someone else?  Or are you comparing dating me to _not dating?”_

“Your implication,” Steve observed, taking a sip, the soda can small in his hand, “is that dating is preferable to not-dating.  I’m not convinced that that’s true, in my case.”

“And maybe it isn’t,” Lee agreed easily.  “I think you need to decide that for yourself.  And, also, decide whether _dating_ is even the right word for whatever arrangement we would make.”

Steve cocked an eyebrow at him.  “If it were solely up to you, what arrangement would you pick?” he asked, feeling cautious, but also curious.  And another emotion - a darker one, tinged with red.     

Lee smiled, and Steve felt something clench in his chest.  The smile was broad and delicious, full of mischief and also that same red-tinted thing Steve was feeling.

It was a Lee smile, not a Bucky smile…  But only just.  

Lee hummed, satisfied at whatever he saw on Steve’s face.  “I liked what I had with Darcy,” Lee said.  “We both knew what we were there for, we weren’t seeing anyone else, and we were both very fond of each other…  But we weren’t in love, and now that it’s over, we’re still friends.”  He tipped his eyebrows at Steve.  “Seems to have worked out pretty well.”

Steve watched as Lee reached out, crushing the empty can Steve had left, and arched it into the recyclables.  He made it, this time.

“I’d like to think about it,” Steve said.

Lee shivered.

Steve acknowledged to himself that he _may_ have used the Captain Voice deliberately.  

“Of course you can think about it,” Lee said.  He stood, and Steve watched the mask fall into place.  Not anger, he decided; manners.  He had asked for space, and Lee was giving it to him.  “Mind if I use your guest bedroom tonight?”

“Of course not,” Steve said, joining him on his feet.  “The bed’s all made up, there’s towels in the closet, and I think Tony ordered you some pajamas and spare clothes; maybe check the closet before you go to sleep?  If not, you can always borrow some of mine.”  Steve gestured him towards the room:   _after you._

“Are you going for a run in the morning?”

“Almost every morning,” Steve admitted.  “Although sometimes in the gym, if it’s raining.”

“Mind if I join you?” Lee asked, and correctly interpreted the look on Steve’s face.  “I can go straight up and back, and you can do S-curves two blocks to either side of me.”

Steve laughed.  “Sure,” he said easily, “I head out around 6:30.”

He stopped at the open door of the guest bedroom, watching as Lee checked the closet.  “Oh, for…”  

“Tony,” Steve shrugged the explanation of the various jeans, t-shirts, dress shirts, skirts, shoes, ties and more that filled the closet in Lee’s (and, if Steve had to guess, Jodie’s and Isaac’s) sizes.  

Steve found himself lingering, hesitating in the doorway, curiously unwilling to step away... 

Lee gave a little smile, there and quickly hidden again, and came back to the door.  

Stepped through it, into Steve’s personal space, and then closer.

Stood on his toes, a bit, to get the extra two inches to press his lips to Steve’s.

Steve grabbed a handful of denim waistband and held him there.  

At first, there was just pressure.  Cautious, a feeling out from two men, neither of whom had done this all that much before.  Steve moved his mouth softly, finding the shapes of the other man’s mouth, the width, the plumpness of the lower lip…the slant of the upper...

Lee nipped, very deliberately.

Steve gasped and opened his mouth, tongue sweeping forward and across.  Lee groaned and curled his hands in Steve’s t-shirt, thrusting his tongue into Steve’s mouth, and suddenly it was all he could think about, the slick backwards and forwards, the feel of Lee pressed against him, smaller than Steve was but still substantial, _strong,_ and so _urgent,_ everything was _important,_ and Steve found himself pressing forward, pressing Lee into the door frame, trying to squeeze himself into Lee…

Lee fisted a hand in the longest part of Steve’s hair, right by the temple, and pulled, and Steve surprised them both with how loudly he moaned.  Lee echoed it, the sound scooping down then back up again to end on a whimper, but Steve also didn’t miss the pressure of Lee’s other hand against his chest.  

Pushing.   _Away,_ it said

Steve let go.  He rocked back on his heels, and just _looked,_ for a moment.

Lee’s lips were parted, eyes hooded.  He was panting, and, as Steve watched, he bit down on his lower lip, closing his eyes all the way in a silent moan, and then swiped his tongue across where his teeth had just been.  Savoring it.  

They both stepped back at the same time.

“Good night, Steve,” said Lee, his voice hoarse.  

He closed the door.  

 

 

Steve slept like a baby that night, and woke to the alarm at 5:45 feeling better than he had in years.  Or, he supposed, decades.

  
  


They had breakfast in the common room, Steve explaining that he typically tried to make something vaguely healthy for the rest of the group, since he was usually the first up.  “If Tony beats me to the kitchen, he’s usually been up all night,” he said.  “He just makes coffee, and sometimes one of those vile smoothies.  If Clint gets here first, it’s usually because he couldn’t sleep, and he’ll make comfort food:  usually french toast, sometimes pancakes and soft-boiled eggs.  

“When it’s Natasha who wakes up early,” he continued, pouring the batter into the waffle irons, “She goes down to the coffee shop on level three, and we don’t see her all day.  Pepper _never_ eats breakfast in here; Tony says that she enjoys eating in her pajamas, and so always does it in their apartment.”  He flipped the irons into place, then started dropping ham slices onto a griddle.

“Thor?”

“I’ve found him in here pretty late,” Steve admitted, “but I’ve never known him to be up early.”

“What about Bruce?”

“Bruce makes coffee for himself, then waits until I arrive and then helps with whatever I was doing.”

“Darcy?  Jane?”  

Steve smiled, taking the syrup, butter, and jams out of the refrigerator, setting them on the counter near the bowl Lee was slicing fruit into.  “Darcy’s a wildcard,” he said, going back for the peanut butters.  He wasn’t sure why they had five kinds of peanut butter, but he'd put them out every time he made waffles because they were on the shelf with the maple syrup, and now he’d started to like the taste, himself.  “She’s been known to follow Clint’s pattern, or Bruce’s, and I’m pretty sure she’s done Pepper’s and Natasha’s, too.

“Jane just comes in, takes her pop-tarts, and leaves.  She doesn’t always get coffee, even.”  

“Jane is a strange little woman,” Lee said, focused on cutting out a brown spot from an otherwise delicious strawberry.  Steve took advantage of him not looking to grin at the way his eyebrows were drawing together.   “I like her a lot, though.”

There was a soft snort from the doorway, and Natasha eased into the room, stealing three slices of kiwi from the bowl.  “Fury sent us a message,” she told Steve.  “SHIELD wants us in DC in two days.”

“Sure,” he said easily.  “Waffles?”

“Hmm,” she said, meaning _no._ She poured herself a cup of coffee.

“They’re buckwheat,” Steve continued, “With wheat germ, and there’s butter and marmalade warming on the counter.”  

_“Hm,_ ” she said, and this one meant _yes.,_ and maybe also _thank you._  Steve smiled, and flipped the waffle irons just as they started to beep.  He pried out the first one, popping it on a plate; dusted it with confectioners sugar and cinnamon; and passed it over.  

“Pretty,” she said, and that one _definitely_ meant _thank you._ Steve was learning that Natasha was actually very polite, as long as she liked you.  

“How long are we staying in DC?” Steve asked, moving waffles onto plates: one for him, two for Lee.  

“Six months,” Natasha said, spreading her marmalade, and Steve set down the plates.

“Six _months?”_ He coated the irons with the non-stick spray, then poured a new batch of batter in.

“It wasn’t my idea,” she said.  Meaning, _I don’t like this at all._

“I…  in a hotel?”

“They’re getting you an apartment.”

_“They_ are, huh.”  Steve scowled at batter dripping down the side of the pitcher, making a buttermilk-colored ring on the counter.

“It should be right up the block from mine,” she said, raising her eyebrows, and Steve let his shoulders drop.  He leaned over to spoon fruit salad on top of her marmalade for her, spreading it so that the kiwis lay flat in little wheels, and the clementine slices curved around the cherries and berries like lovers.

“Pretty,” she said again.

She passed him the honeybear, then looked directly at Lee.  “Thank you for breakfast,” she told him, and took it with her.

Apparently, they would be talking about it later.

In private.

Lee watched her go - Steve could hardly blame him - then turned back.  “Six months,” Lee commented.  “Well, you _did_ want some time to think about it.”

Steve laughed, caught out, and flipped some ham from the griddle to their plates.  “I wasn’t thinking _that_ much time,” he said ruefully.  

“To be honest,” Lee admitted, “Neither was I.  But then,” he added, carefully spreading the “Dark Chocolate Dreams” peanut butter on his first-story waffle, “I _know_ what _I_ want.”  He dropped Steve a smile which was no less devastating for its deliberateness.  “I’m following your lead,” he finished.  “Do you have any whipped cream?”

Steve found the can and passed it over.  He made sure to check first, unobtrusively, but no more of his colleagues were poised to enter the room.  Unless Clint was in the air vents again.  “I want,” he said carefully, “What you mentioned last night.  Like you had with Darcy.  Except, instead of setting an end date…”

Lee raised his eyebrows, slicing his ham into small pieces.  

“Could we set a date for, uh…  reassessing?”

Lee looked up, caught in the mid-slice.  “Reassessing,” he repeated.

Steve shrugged, and gestured to indicate mile-markers.  “‘Here’s where we thought we would be.  I’m here, you’re there.  Do we want to stay the way we are or change it?’  That way, we’re not committed to breaking it off, if we discover that we’d really rather not… and we could set the reassess date earlier, without worrying that we’re cheating ourselves out of time.  Like, two months?”

Lee made a thinking face as he moved around the counter, grabbing the maple syrup and applying it liberally to his entire plate, then switching the waffles out when they were done and starting another batch.  

He turned around.  “Sounds good,” he said, with a smile which wasn’t practiced much at all.  

“Except now, I’m going to DC for six months,” Steve reminded him, frustrated.

“That’s not really a problem for me.”

Steve blinked at him.

“I could rent a car to drive down,” Lee continued, and Steve watched him cut into the carbohydrate stack with an unconscious, happy little noise.  “Or on a nice day, I could even take my bike; summer’s coming up.  Or... I hear there are these things called planes, now, we could try one of those.”  Steve suppressed a happy smile as Lee licked a bit of syrup off his hand.  “Oh, or!  There’s trains!  What do you people call it here, Amtrak?  I bet Amtrak could get me there.”

“So you’re saying…”  Steve watched Lee carefully.  “...full speed ahead?”

Lee froze.  “Was that…”  He looked suspiciously at Steve.  “Was that a _train pun?”_ Steve started to grin, and Lee laughed, incredulous. “Because I think that’s _boats,_ asshole _,_ the ‘full speed ahead’ thing.  Like _Titanic?”_  

“No, I think it’s both,” Steve argued.  “It’s the throttle on the engine, it’s - _mmph!”_

Some time later, Steve pulled back, giving a happy bounce up and down on his toes. “So, you’ll come visit me in DC?”  

“Sometimes.  If you get leave from your crazy, evil bosses, you could come visit me here, too.  Do me a favor, though,” Lee added, tapping Steve’s arm.  Steve obligingly let him go, and Lee returned to the end of the counter with his breakfast.  “Make some friends there.  Not just at work, although those are good, too, I obviously like _my_ work friends…  But also someone you don’t know from work at all.  Someone you meet jogging, or drawing, or while taking more acting classes.”  

Steve swallowed.  “Okay,” he said, forking up more fruit salad.  

“Promise?”  Lee pointed a fork at him, looking worried.

“Yeah, I promise.  What’s up, though?”

“I don’t know,” Lee admitted.  “I’ve got a feeling, is all.  But, I mean…”  He twitched a shoulder in embarrassment.  “My ex is a wizard, and I’m about to be semi-dating Captain America.  I figure I should trust my instincts.”  

Steve chewed and swallowed, thinking it over.  “I’ll make sure to get all that training set up for you, before I go,” he said after a minute.  “I promise I will make at least one non-work friend, although I reserve the right to be picky about them.”  Lee rolled his eyes, but he was smiling.  “I’ll come and visit you if I can, and if not, I’m giving you half the cost of your transport.”  He chewed on a lip as he thought about it, reviewing his own instincts, trying to suss out anything he’d missed.  He had a sudden memory of Hill calling out to him in the Triskellion, and shivered.  “A lot can change in just a couple months,” he worried, and Lee shrugged in his calm way.  

“The moving thing sucks,” he summarized philosophically.  “But I think it’s going to be an interesting time, all the same.”  He gave Steve another smile - this one _was_ practiced- and essentially began fellating his fork in the process of eating pancakes, only to stop and choke as Clint stumbled in.  

  
  


Lee came down to help Steve move in that weekend, and Steve greeted him at the door with a polite smile and distance.  They went to a cafe down the street, and Steve said, "I found a bug while moving in," his voice grim.

"Like a bedbug?"  Lee looked horrified.

"No," said Steve.  "Like an electronic bug."

The next week, Steve was on a mission, and the week after _that,_  Lee was in Vancouver with Clint and Isaac, turning over the parchments to Tony.  Clint instantly bonded with both Tony and all of his friends, although he didn't get to meet Henry; Isaac pretended to be Steve, and actually fooled both Zev (the whole time) and Tony (for half an hour).  

The fourth week _,_ Steve and Lee met up in Philadelphia, where they were purportedly in town to run a marathon; they rented two hotel rooms, but only ever saw the inside of one of them.  

 

 

After that, the next time Steve saw Lee, they were both back in New York for good, and SHIELD had been burned to the ground.  

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) There is a sequel, which, in true MCU fashion, we will get a hint at with a post-credits scene, which I will post immediately after this. The sequel is not written yet, not even started or plotted, so I'm going to finish all the prequelly goodness happening over in _Before_ first.  
>  2) [Before and Very Before:](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6757777/chapters/15444190) The magical first adventures of Henry and Steve.   
> There is another prequel between that one and this fic, and when I get the link up, I'll post that here, too.  
> 3) I really wanted Lee and Steve to spend the month immediately prior to CA:tWS just banging like a screen door, but the thing is, it's really important to them that this stay confidential, and that apartment was bugged. And not only would that upset the boys, when their secret got out, it would probably fuck over my plot, too. I couldn't be having it. I hope you understand. (It kinda broke my heart.)  
> 4) I kind of want to write the fic where Clint, Lee, and Isaac go up to Vancouver. I kind of want Isaac to pretend to be Captain America at Henry, and Henry is Not Impressed. I don't think I want it enough to write it, though. (Sorry!)


	10. After Credits

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The final piece of set-up for the sequel (and a scene which kept me writing while this fic doubled in size)

 

Tony Foster woke up with a pounding headache, probably because the last thing he remembered was a sharp blow to the back of his head.  He groaned, and tried to roll over.

It didn’t work.

Largely because his wrists were duct taped to a headboard.  

It was a nice headboard, simple lines, little curvy… design… _thing_ in the center, simple arched top, and two posts sticking up like minarets, one on each side, perfect for holding someone captive with.  

It was oak, or some other dark, durable wood like that.  Probably wouldn’t break.

He flexed his fingers, and cursed.   _Ow, shit, fuck!  Pins and needles!  Pins and needles like_ crazy!   _Damn it!_

Experimentally, he tried kicking his feet, and that worked pretty well, so he scooched his butt up the bed enough to sit up a bit.

_You know, I’m pretty sure one of the heading in Arra’s Wizardpedia was about “release from bonds”.  That seems like the sort of thing I really should have read over a year ago…_

He hadn’t, though, because he’d been too busy with things like “Spell to Put Out Fire” and “Spell To Find Lost Things” (useful in the case of both the remote and his apprentice), so now he was stuck.  He glared at his left wrists, twisting it back and forth to loosen the binding.  

“You know, people used to pay me for this,” he grumbled to the duct tape.

“They did?”

Tony yelped and tried to flail, which didn’t result in much other than knocking his already-sore head against the headboard.  “Ow god _damn it!”_ he shouted.

“Careful.”  The speaker came into view from Tony’s right, where there was apparently a door in the wall the bed was against.  

Tony stared.

To be fair, the man was gorgeous.   _Anyone_ would have stared, Tony reassured himself. _Jesus_ would have stared.

Jesus might have stared because of the man's resemblance to _himself._ The man was tall, a little run down.   _Definitely rocking the stubbly look,_ Tony thought ruefully.  His hair was longer than was fashionable, but not long enough to come out the other side into man-bun territory, instead hanging loose around his face, highlighting his _absolutely gorgeous_ blue eyes and his _adorably pouty_ mouth _oh God I have a problem!_  

He was broad-shouldered, straight-backed; Tony would have bet on him being a soldier, even before he spotted the prosthesis.  

His eyes were a strange combination of calm, and nervous.  

 _Wizards see what’s there,_  Tony reminded himself.

Fine.  The stranger's eyes were hunted.

He approached the bed, setting a tray with what looked like soup and a spoon on the edge, then sat beside him and leaned forward to look at the bump on the back of Tony’s head.

Tony swallowed around the sudden lump in his throat, and silently explained to his dick that this was _medical attention, damn it, do not get excited._

(It had _been a while,_ okay?)

“Sorry about the kidnapping,” Hotness McHobo said seriously, having finished looking Tony over.  He sat back a little - not very far, Tony noticed - and, looking deep into Tony’s eyes, he said, “I need your help.”


End file.
